Pitchfork

The hallmarks of newest-wave rock and roll aren't shaping up to be very punk. Earth-long drones, Mogwai builds, previously unheard of portions of Japanoise ear-bleed; there are fewer three minute songs, and, even when loud, tracks seem less confrontational. The double-edged sword of the new avant garde: more patient audiences, more bands taking license. On this contested ground, Toronto two piece Nadja drop Truth Becomes Death. Heavy and abstract, Nadja plow the increasingly popular territory being laid out between slow metal and staticy ambiance. Alien8's first real venture into the far side of the art-rock metal divide, the move would perhaps be more significant if the gap wasn't already shrinking so rapidly. Without being shockingly original, Nadja's sound is the apotheosis of a long convergence and (welcome) genre bleed.

Though timely, Truth Becomes Death risks being a marginal record, if only because it has a nature so huge some might take it as scenery. Archaeological in the same way a many times dubbed-over tape is, Nadja move their source material way back in mix and let fuzz and a sea of glowing noise ride shotgun along with the instruments. The resulting environment has a giant resonance. Drum (machine) sound is triply huge on "Bug/Golem"; not only is the recording so big it sounds as if they expanded the room to accommodate it, but stray elements echo the percussion on every rock solid hit. The song incorporates lo-fi 90s cassette aesthetics and 80s guitar breakdowns and assigns both new meanings: a Youth of Today macho bullshit chug-chug-chug is turned into epic, arty song punctuation.

In this barbarously delicate sea, the crashing guitars and horror house vocals of "Memory Leak" wreck damage in some other nearby room. Spooky synth guitar solos only add to the distance; the aggro stuff is so diluted it becomes panoramic. Part of the charm of the old slow-core, big riffs pseudo-metal was that it shot a pure dose, but so did the ultra-fast grind of the Locust or Discordance Axis; once the gimmick is over, it's over. Nadja's not obsessed or stuck on ideologies, which is why they sound like latecomers. But as they put it on "Breakpoint", "the infestation breaks loose, spreads, and at some point takes over\xD1bacteria grows on my circuits and I learn how to feel." So they take the old grinding sonic palette of indecipherable and ripping vocals over thundering guitars, rot it, and stick its head underwater. Then they learn how to sing with their lungs submerged.