Pitchfork

When Toronto electro-metal duo Nadja are at the height of their powers, the entire world feels as if it could collapse beneath the pressure of a manipulated guitar, a drum machine, a bass, and two bent voices. Radiance of Shadows, the fourth full-length album the band has released this year, pushes to and pulls from such apocalyptic promise for 80 minutes, saturating their cathedral volume with sounds both thick and rich. Though Nadja plays torpid, doomy metal that replaces the usual toolkit with keyboards, the music's effect recalls black metal: Huge and impenetrable, the sound loudly grates, collapses, then instantly slams back at full tilt. Radiance of Shadows, Nadja's best album to date, is a series of warm-ups, cool-downs, and sprints that turn those sounds into a dramatic marathon through steep hills. A vortex of instability, Radiance's three tracks are exhausting.

The album's only fault (a term that borders on hyperbole here) is its conceptual foundation. Touched, the second LP Nadja released this year and its second ever for Alien8, funneled song-like sentiments into the band's devastating sounds. The lyrics (about a lover responsible for an arachnid metamorphosis) fit the music (tangled, beckoning, forceful), and the narrative and sculpted noise reinforced one another. But Radiance shoehorns its concept-- lovers branded to one another by the sun-- into sounds that speak more vividly than their words ever could: "I am turned to dust by the heat of your breath," ends the second track. "Reduced to subatomic particles/ Leeching through your skin/ Each time a cell splits off/ We become a new flesh," the closing third picks up in total treacle regalia. Whatever: These tracks maul with an intensity that betrays plenty of feeling and passion, and their rapturous sense of motion and crushing sense of sound imply the love affair just fine.

Guilted by the Sun, the Nadja album between Touched and Radiance, doesn't light the same response: More concise and more dynamic, it's only a teaser for the band's full fury. Compared to Radiance's long-distance sprint, these four tracks over 28 minutes feel like watching two B-list ball teams stranding runners for 53 scoreless outs, only to have a pinch hitter benched for personal reasons smack the shit out of a sweet-spot fastball in the ninth to win it. Like a member of the clean-up crew, you're left watching the crowd thin out, disappointed in its Saturday night entertainment.

Guilted slams in, crushing placid guitars with drum machine jolts and Baker's lacerated roar. After four minutes, it falls apart and rebuilds, stalling once more to let quick beats disrupt a bed of noise. The album's best moment comes as all of Nadja's devices-- rumbling bassline, drums, synthesizers-- short out one by one, a reminder that this cretaceous size is electronically driven. "By" wraps turmoil in heavy fuzz, and drum machines slip phantom beats inside of a militant, direct stomp. It plateaus, corrodes and slopes into "The", which growls, then lurks. "Sun" does much the same, just over eight minutes instead of four. You'll call its overly logical, pedal-predictable fade-out in the air.

Taken together, Guilted by the Sun and Radiance of Shadows elucidate the problems and payoffs of what's been a frantic, fantastic year for Nadja. After four full-lengths, two collaborations, two solo discs of somnambulant electronics, and a post-rock record from Baker in less than 12 months (with three discs slated for release early next year), Nadja's capabilities and compassions seem mostly without bounds right now. The duo's pacing may be laborious, and its hyper-dynamics can be exhausting. Still, the sounds between those poles and along those protractions are as impressive as anything anyone is currently doing near metal.