For a while there in the early/00s, Nails was one of the flagship bands of what I call the “Southern Lord” sound. Bands like Nails, Trap Them, All Pigs Must Die, Black Breath, Dead In the Dirt, playing a filthy form of Swedish Death metal-hued d-beat, crust, grindcore/hardcore. And I’m confident in saying popular new bands like Gatecreeper, Fuming Mouth, Terminal Nation, etc can be traced back to that era and sound.
But then after 2016s You Will Never Be One of Us, when the band was peaking and signed to Nuclear Blast, there was some controversy surrounding Nails frontman founder and Todd Jones, a very public feud with Metalsucks.com, and then everyone but Jones left the band.
So eight years later and with a new lineup that includes drummer Carlos Cruz (Warbringer), bassist Andrew Solis (Despise You, Apparition), and guitarist Shelby Lermo (Ulthar), Jones is back with a new Nails album and hoping all is forgotten, with the antagonistically named Every Bridge Burned.
Even with the revamped lineup, and time away, Jones and Nails are back with a vengeance, containing the band’s vicious d beat/crust/grind that they played way back when they blew me away with Unsilent Death 14 years ago and perfected with 2013s Abandon All Hope and 2016s You Will Never Be One of Us. Now, there is still some Rotten Sound/Nasum pure grindcore but there is plenty of fucking filthy grooves (“Lacking the Ability to Process Empathy”, “No More Rivers to Cross”), nasty gallops (“I Can’t Turn it Off”, “Give Me the Painkiller”), and skin peeling blasts (“Imposing Will”, “Trapped”, “Punishment Map”, “Dehumanized”).
Of course, everything sounds disgustingly filthy and fuzzed out with Kurt Ballou (Gatecreeper, Fuming Mouth, All Pigs Must Die, Vallenfyre) delivering his trademark heft and buzz, and like all prior releases, it’s a swift, short but violent assault (21 minutes).
That all said, I don’t think Nails is hardly ‘reclaiming the genre throne’ or anything, as in the eight-year gap, bands like Gatecreeper, Fuming Mouth, and such have certainly kept the throne pretty warm in their stead.
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