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Nadja, "Radiance of Shadows"
This ferocious triptych from the esteemed duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff lacks that gauzy, narcotic quality of Jesu's increasingly popular heady metal shoegaze, though it more than compensates by being imperiously steeped in consummately sepulchral aesthetics.
I first experienced Nadja's so-called ambient doom by catching the last five minutes or so of their performance at the Brainwaves festival in 2006, arriving characteristically late as a form of reckless, brash rebellion. Once in the darkened theater, their final act of ebbing and flowing didn't exactly motivate me to seek out their material, but now, a year later, I stumbled back on to this group thanks to recommendations from some especially rabid Sunn O))) fans. What I soon discovered was that Nadja's songs can only be fully absorbed, appreciated, and enjoyed when heard ideally in their respective entireties. (Nonetheless, ironically and in defiance, I am still offering sound samples below.)
Saturated in dark, polluted water, Radiance of Shadows recoils at the permeating glare of the sun above, except when taunting its drowning, panicked listeners with fleeting glimpses of an unattainable surface. Despite each of the three tracks clocking in at roughly less than 30 minutes a piece, the album demands active listening with its systematic flexing of muscles and interspersed lulls. "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds" is more psychotropic than psychedelic, its massive and consumptive waves of riffage ravaging like some awesome yet terrifying acid trip. Walls of searing toxic sludge metal dovetail with disproportionately effulgent ambience, creating a dissonantly harmonious kind of bloom and gloom effect where sounds are simultaneously overwhelming and overwhelmed. The subsequent "I have tasted the fire inside your mouth" eases off the distortion pedal for long enough to appreciate its marginally strident atmospheres, but soon enough that oppressive grind resurges. As with Justin Broderick's aforementioned project, this track showcases the delicacy of harsh sonics, but discloses the evidence in vociferous abstraction as opposed to Jesu's clear song structure. The title track, which serves as the finale, builds up anxious tension between its buried, softly uttered lyrics and bombastic guitar eruptions, though it pales in comparison to its astounding preceding movements, fizzling out into familiar though somewhat redundant cacophony.
As if Nadja needed help in the credibility department, the venerable James Plotkin handled the mastering of this grotesque, transcendent record. With the destructive power of nuclear energy at its center, Radiance of Shadows attempts to metaphorically harness a sonic equivalent, and, to some extent, succeeds. Fans of Stephen O'Malley's myriad drone projects will certainly find this worth adding to their collections.
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