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Nadja - Touched review




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Reviewer:
8.8

14 users:
8.07
Band: Nadja
Album: Touched
Release date: March 2002


01. Mutagen
02. Stays Demons
03. Incubation / Metamorphosis
04. Flowers Of Flesh

This is a review for the reworked version released by Alien8 Recordings in 2007.

Nadja is one of those bands that release albums on an almost daily basis. After their debut album "Touched" in 2002, no less than ten full-lengths followed, and most of these sound quite similar. Because of this, it is hard to recommend newbies where to start with this band, but on the otherhand, you can not really go wrong either.

"Touched" is the first album, and in my opinion also the best. Here they displayed their unique sound for the first time, which can be described as "Jesu in slow-motion, flying on their fuzz-pedals to a concert of the Cocteau Twins". That pretty much means: lots of bass, blissed out drone with beautiful, careless shoegaze, combined in an absolutely towering wall of fuzzy, warm and buzzing drone.

This album thrives on its exceptional and confounding use of bass. Better said: it would not exist without its overwhelming, omnipresent bass. It sounds like a constant flow of liquid bass, a wrecking mud-flood, dragging howling and shimmering feedback along its destructive trail. Synthesizers escape from time to time and dissolve in the brooding air. Every once heavily breathing vocals float to the surface, almost indistuingishable from the pulp of instruments. Yet it never sounds dangerous, rather inevitable and liberating. Peace through death.

"Touched" is, alongside other amazing bands, the proof of what an amazing genre Drone/Doom can be. Very few genres can combine such an overpowering distortion with deeply emotive, buried melodies. People may discard it too quickly, becausecause the pulp of instruments does not give away its secrets on first sight, and most albums will require a lot of spins. But it is worth it.

Listen to this when witnessing the last sunset of your life. Listen to this while slowly sinking into a steamy hot bathtub after slitting your wrists. Listen to this while being succumbed and obliterated by the whitehot intensity of a nearing red star. Listen to this. It is a monstrous piece of art.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 9
Songwriting: 9
Originality: 10
Production: 9





Written on 20.02.2008 by If you're interested in extreme, often emotional and underground music, check out my reviews. I retired from reviewing, but I really used to be into that stuff.


Comments

Comments: 1   Visited by: 48 users
20.04.2012 - 16:31
Boxcar Willy
yr a kook
Definately a good one. Nice review.
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14:22 - Marcel Hubregtse
I do your mum

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