Nux Vomica, Portland-by-way-of-Baltimore's ever evolving crust outfit, is back with their third full length album. The self-titled effort is their first release on Relapse Records and it's also their most adventurous offering to date. Nux Vomica has never been shy about integrating aspects of death metal, doom, hardcore, and various other types of extreme music into their unique brand of crust punk, but Nux Vomica is in a league all its own.
Although the songs on this album were written in the same span of time as 2009's Asleep in the Ashes, there's still a marked progression in the sound from one album to the next. The most obvious difference is the band's move away from melodic death metal and a much more prevalent post-metal presence on this album.
Nux Vomica's transformation into a crusty Neurosis is an interesting sonic evolution, but one that's not entirely surprising. The band has always flirted with the expansive-sounding atmosphere that's a cornerstone of post-metal, but, on Nux Vomica, those flirtations have blossomed into outright infatuation. Possibly as a result of this stylistic change, track lengths have wisely been expanded to accommodate the focus on atmospherics; the album features a paltry three songs, but the shortest track is nearly 12 minutes long.
Within the framework of each song, guitars are allowed to drone and feedback for minutes at a time. Tempos deviate between furious, crusty gallops and crushing waves of plodding doom. The band doesn't shy away from soaring major chord progressions either. "Reeling," the second track on the album, begins by climbing out from under roughly 13 minutes of "Sanity is for the Passive's" misanthropic rage on the back of a singularly uplifting guitar melody. However, this tonal shift is short lived as the song quickly crashes back to the earth and into a morass of depressive, doom-laden atmospherics.
This stylistic ebb and flow combined with the lack of traditional "songs" are what give Nux Vomica its power. This album is more a unified musical composition than a collection of stand-alone tracks. There's a distinct sense of movement within and between each song, and, as a result, the experience of listening is closer to a trip through a post-apocalyptic landscape than attending a concert. When absorbed in an uninterrupted listening session, with no distractions to take away from the music, Nux Vomica is a viciously primal transcendental experience.
While the music of Nux Vomica is akin to a boat ride through water that's alternately calm and dangerously choppy, the lyrics are brackish throughout. Dyed-in-the-wool purists may view what Nux Vomica is doing as a corruption of crust punk ideals, but lyrically the band never veers from the style's focus on socio-political themes and nihilistic bleakness.
"Sanity is for the Passive" and "Choked at the Roots" both deal with humanity's struggle against our selfish and self-destructive nature, while "Reeling" details the descent of a recovering alcoholic back into addiction. The songs all paint pictures of a world where hope once existed, but was ultimately crushed by human nature and experience. The words mirror the music as each song's subjects struggle to keep their heads above water only to be sucked back down by forces within and without. Ultimately there are no happy endings.
To say that Nux Vomica is going to be a standout record of 2014 would be an understatement. There's very little the band did wrong here, and there's not much room for improvement within the album. Those who need their art spoon fed to them may be repulsed by the band's blatant disregard for genre boundaries, but adventurous types will likely discover an album they'll revisit for years. Nux Vomica is out now on Relapse Records. For a good representation of what you're in for, stream the band's crushingly epic track "Choked at the Roots" below.
