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At first glance the
Portland, Oregon band Nanda Devi looks to be another worshipper at the
altar of Neurosis, plying a brand of crusty, dark sludge-metal with
nebulous mystical overtones and an appetite for slow, crushing riffage.
This debut album has some interesting quirks up it's sleeve, though,
and Fifth Season ends up one of the more interesting debuts
that I've picked up so far this year. The music is mostly slow and
punishing when it's at it's heaviest, and the band's mix of grim
hardcore and doom metal references Buzzoven as much as it does early
Neurosis. Guitars are massively distorted and saturated, grinding out
hulking detuned drone-riffs and gluey slow-motion crustcore, the sludgy
metallic riffing corroded and rich in texture, and these heavier
passages are made even more crushing by being contrasted with fantastic
melodic riffs and leads that give Nanda Devi's music an epic, panoramic
feel. It's similiar in some ways to the moving melodic doom metal of
Thou and Samothrace, but with lots of spidery, angular guitar parts
appearing between the sludgy riffs, alternating the grinding downtuned
crush with tendrils of Slint-like math rock.
The drumming also stands out on this disc. Beginning with "The Circumpolar Current", Fifth Season
combines more straightforward dirges with thunderous walls of awesome,
churning tribal drumming, and the constant surge of polyrhythmic battle
drums across these songs turns Nanda Devi's epic math-sludge into
something even more ferocious and epic. The vocals are utterly brutal,
spewing chunks of vicious death metal roar and gutteral screams, and
the band incorporates some eerie spoken-word samples in a couple of
spots that add to the tension. What appears to be one of Nanda Devi's
siganture moves is the use of short instrumental pieces that surround
their songs, each one untitled, and these range from hypnotic
trance-loops of guitar/bass noise and ambient whirr, to dreamy washes
of buzzing guitar drone and decayed Basinkski-esque loops of fragmented
melody, and floating clusters of melodic minor key guitars that drift
over clanking, grinding machine rhythms. These instrumental interludes
give the album an almost industrial feel, and along with the tribal
drumming, epic melodies, and math rock parts really make these guys
stand out from the sludge/doom metal masses. I hear bits of everything
from Buzzoven and Buried At Sea to Mono, Godflesh and Japanese hardcore
architects Envy in here, but Nanda Devi takes all of these elements,
the soaring melodic guitars, the filthy apocalyptic heaviness, the
dreamy machine loops and the math rock riffs, and weave it into their
own complex, weighty sound.
-Crucial Blast
Pick it up here: http://www.crucialblastshop.net/ or at http://cavityrecords.bigcartel.com
5:29 PM
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