Review: Nails ‘Every Bridge Burning’
It’s been eight years since Nails’ last full-length album, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that a lot will have changed for them. With a completely new lineup, save for founder Todd Jones, and nearly a decade of musical ideas to build upon, the expectation may be that Every Bridge Burning is the start of a new dawn. But in actuality, and as you may tell from the similar cover art, this record feels more like a continuum. It’s almost as if Nails never went away.
The bands first two albums, 2010’s Unsilent Death and 2013’s Abandon All Life, came at an interesting point for extreme music. At a time when even the heaviest of metalcore bands were becoming more melodic and even the most brutal of grindcore bands seemed to be getting more goofy, Nails felt like a breath of filthy air. Their songs were ferocious, visceral, raw blasts of pure bile and HM2 driven anger. A combination of grindcore, metallic hardcore and Swedish death metal that sounded so wonderfully hellish it was impossible to ignore.
The relative popularity that hit them around 2014 was unexpected, I think for both observers and the band themselves. So, it was no surprise that on the follow up, 2016’s You’ll Never Be One Of Us, they reacted by digging further into their isolationist themes. The album may have been more refined in its production, tone, and songwriting, but the message remained the same: this is not music for everyone, we will never compromise our sound, and we love what we do. To each their own.
Over the last decade there have been a torrent of bands leading off from the Nails sound while striving to do something different. Bands such as Full Of Hell, Code Orange and Cult Leader all owe a huge debt to Nails but have become totally unique in their own right. The two-track EP they released in 2019, I Don’t Want To Know You, showed a lot of promise within just four minutes. So, will Nails follow it up and unleash some creativity and freshness in order to elevate what they do too?
The answer is no. In fact, Every Bridge Burning picks up exactly where they left off and mostly follows a formula, both musically and thematically, which they have already perfected. It isn’t inherently a bad thing, and there is something rather impressive about managing to come back in this way, but I don’t feel this record is any better than what Nails have done before.
The production is tight and the performances are solid, especially the vocals which are markedly more venomous and vicious sounding…
The opener, Imposing Will, is a full-on grindcore track that reminds me of Napalm Death’s underrated series of albums from the 2000s. Punishment Map is much the same but adds in some gang vocals and a semi-breakdown ending, while the title track, Every Bridge Burning, ups the grooviness and Dehumanized adds in a very cool death metal chorus riff. The production is tight and the performances are solid, especially the vocals which are markedly more venomous and vicious sounding this time around. It’s all very good, and yet for some reason, it just feels a little unsatisfying.
The individual songwriting structure doesn’t really change much either; a super-fast first half, a slower riffy second half. You’ll find it across the band’s discography, and except for a handful of longer and slower tracks, they pretty much stick to it. Even on this album, the thirty-eight-second Trapped manages to follow it, albeit at a relatively quicker pace.
There are a few outliers of course. Lacking The Ability To Process Empathy is a more mid-paced chuggy affair. It’s got some thunderous riffs that are very catchy but also very familiar. Give Me The Painkiller’s spritely guitar runs might initially sound like a flash of creativity, but in reality, the track sounds exactly like something Converge would have done ten years ago. As do Made Up In Your Mind and I Can’t Turn It Off. They are not unenjoyable because of it, but the similarity is a bit distracting, especially considering how big a part Kurt Balou’s production also plays in the Nails sound.
Of course, the closing track No More Rivers To Cross is the longest, and it really benefits from the space to expand a bit, to ebb and flow and draw the listener in. It’s an engaging finale, but it’s the kind of track Nails have done before and, quite frankly, done better.
Every Bridge Burning is a pretty good album. I quite enjoyed it, there isn’t a bad track on it, and I happily listened to it multiple times without getting bored. But then there isn’t really that much on it to get bored with in the first place. It’s over in eighteen minutes, and whilst previous albums were equally as brief, they left you with a breathless excitement and an overwhelming desire to hit the repeat button. Perhaps it will grow on me as it has definitely got its moments, but my overwhelming desire after listening to it, is to play their older records again.
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Band Links: Official | Facebook | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Will J
