Nails – Abandon All Life (Southern Lord Records)
Confession time: I’ve been aware of Nails for a few years now but never listened to them, solely because they feature an ex-member of Terror and happened to come out around the same time that a lot of people from tough guy youth crew hardcore bands were latching onto faster, more aggressive strands of music, typically with pretty uninspired results (the sort of thing detailed by the occasionally great Weekend Nachos in their song “Jock Powerviolence”).
Nails – Abandon All Life (Southern Lord Records)
Confession time: I’ve been aware of Nails for a few years now but never listened to them, solely because they feature an ex-member of Terror and happened to come out around the same time that a lot of people from tough guy youth crew hardcore bands were latching onto faster, more aggressive strands of music, typically with pretty uninspired results (the sort of thing detailed by the occasionally great Weekend Nachos in their song “Jock Powerviolence”). So I just figured they were another band following the road paved by the Ceremonys and Trash Talks of the world, one predicated on the realization by yet another generation that Infest has always been better than Hatebreed and always will be. But things aren’t so simple. I’m a grown-ass man, I can readily admit to my mistakes, and writing off Nails in advance was one of them.
So, having established what Nails is not, determining what the band actually is happens to be a thornier prospect. Their music is too stripped down to be death metal, not quite blasty enough to be straight grindcore, too blasty to be lumped in with most hardcore, and too cleanly executed to come off as power violence (of the jock persuation or otherwise). The album’s 17-minute running time is jam-packed with brisk tempo changes and enough variety to keep it from falling into the stagnation that so many attempting this style become ensnared in, employing ample and frequent juxtapositions of contrasting elements – blitzkrieg fastcore gives way to barbaric pummeling breakdowns, crusty brutality is interrupted with lumbering dirge – but none seem forced. On paper, it may seem like a Whitman’s Sampler of hardcore/metal subgenres, but the album possesses a highly developed flow that manages to convey a sense that it was crafted as a totality rather than just as a collection of individual songs.
The less immediately obvious, but wholly integral part of the album’s success comes courtesy of Kurt Ballou’s production. Many recordings along these lines suffer because the clarity of the songs is overwhelmed by the speed, or the heaviness of the material is sacrificed to a desire for rough immediacy, but Ballou demonstrates that the varied approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s no secret that Ballou is a hell of a producer, having honed his craft over the past decade and a half, but the balance that he’s able to strike between rawness and clarity (an equilibrium mastered by a scant few) pushes the songs to a level that they likely would not have reached in any other hands.
Regardless of preconceptions, Nails have created an album that stands apart. Not only do they manage to avoid easy categorization – no small task for a heavy band – but they approach their music with an earnest ferocity that emphasizes the songs’ apocalyptic violence. Abandon All Life isn’t some standard-issue attempt to play at being extreme. Rather, it is a fierce, unrelenting bellow of hatred and disgust that puts to shame most bands that would attempt anything comparable.
