### Nails: Abandon all life

#### 24/10/13 || Habakuk

NO TIIIIME. As you might have noticed (you haven’t) my writing for this site has slowed down considerably over the last few months. That’s because of no fucken time.

Good thing we have Nails. These guys don’t fuck around and get straight to the point with full-on screaming, grinding madness. Just the right thing for the busy 9-to-5-plus-er. Pauses between songs last for about the blink of an eye and we’re thrown right into the brutal stew again. Yisss, efficiency.

The guitars sound like someone’s frantically rubbing a cheesegrinder across the strings, the dude behind the mic is mad angry at something (or everything) and behind all that sits a monkey that knows a rhythm or two, has two sticks and an aggression problem. Sounds like my idea of a good time, and it is for the roughly 20 minutes playing time, 5 of which fall into the closing track. Because interestingly enough, the guys manage to cram enough variation into their wall of sound that their offering does indeed sound like an album, albeit a short one, not just an outburst of uncontrolled rage. Although there is plenty of that left.

The more “mature” structuring can also be a bit of a downside, depending on how you look at it. This is not completely as savage as the dirty, fuzz-ridden first disc, “Obscene Humanity” or Unsilent Death. It’s a bit sharper, more precise and compressed, but that can be a blessing and a curse. The moments where they let completely loose of everything and morph from one bad-ass riff to another, instinctively upping the intensity, still make this a damn fine listen though.

So while I dig it massively, I know this can be done a little better, as they themselves have shown before. Also, the cover is not black and white with high contrast. Shit like this needs black and white cover artworks.

- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Southern Lord Records
- Website: Nails Bandcamp
- Band
- Todd Jones: guitar, vocals
- John Gianelli: bass
- Taylor Young: drums

- Tracklist
- 1. In exodus
- 2. Tyrant
- 3. Absolute control
- 4. God’s cold hands
- 5. Wide open wound
- 6. Abandon all life
- 7. No surrender
- 8. Pariah
- 9. Cry wolf
- 10. Suum cuique