Nadja – "Radiance Of Shadows" - (Alien8 Recordings – ALIENCD72) 2007

One day we will look back at the CD era with fond affection for the times we selected a CD from the endless racks in HMV or Virgin megastores ,endured the minuscule text,and proceeded to listen to an hour and twenty minutes of whomsoever the lucky band were,but pressing stop on the remote at around the  40 minutes mark whilst stifling yawns .....ironically, the length of two sides of a vinyl LP. A natural ending point for any album in the modern age of pop.

There was a compulsion for artists raised in the Vinyl era to put as much material as possible on this new extended format,even if it was the shite usually reserved for the 'Bonus Disc' of  an anniversary remaster.

So what we have here is an artist determined to fill up every nano-second of memory space provided by the aforementioned Digital Compact Disc format,rather than just satisfying the ever shortening Human attention span. Mine is currently about twenty minutes max of anything.A limit I have always adhered to in the live arena. Twenty minutes, then its off to the bar.

First wave Ambient Doom originators Nadja, are very typical of the CD age .Releasing a dumpster full of very similar sounding drone metal versions of wonky airport noises that very rarely clock in at less than twenty minutes a track,like a fuzzy Tangerine Dream fed through a cheap Flanger.

One of  those unfortunate groups who sadly fall between several stools of the 'Metal' category,so frequently get labeled as any one of the following: Doom Metal.,Ambient Metal,(my personal favourite) Dreamsludge (?), ambient-doom, and shoegaze-metal.

Sounding more like My Bloody Valentine rather than Sunn O))) , the Metal label is becoming a more and more tenuous a description for any experimental Rock band,but if it contains any hint of a 'Heavy' riff it's 'Metal',filtered through a barrage of pro-nouns ,prefix's and suffix's.

Topical Oppenheimer references aside, It has it's quiet moments,so Ambient Doom is arguably the most accurate sub-genre of the available choices? Not a large section in your resurgent vinyl store, but I'm sure it exists somewhere?

Am I getting too mainstream?

Tracklist:

1 Now I Am Become Death, The Destroyer Of Worlds (23:26)
2 I Have Tasted The Fire Inside Your Mouth (27:26)
3 Radiance Of Shadows (28:59)

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Doom – "War Crimes (Inhuman Beings)" (Peaceville – VILE 4) 1988

With the haunting image of a dead young woman probably reaped and murdered, lying in a street in Ukraine,and driven over by several Russian tanks operated by laughing Russian murderers lingering in my thoughts.One wonders what possible music from within the barricades of the rock idiom could encapsulate the horror and anger generated by these inhuman war crimes,and still be able to dance to it?

Of course I reached for Doom's debut, and cranked up the amps.

Yeah,it sounds like a crustier Discharge with different vocals,and i'm not too much of a fan of that Growly " Your Grandmother sucks cocks in Hell" vocal style so beloved of Grindcore, but......there's something relevant within the dark walls of this relentless high speed bludgeon that is the perfect accompaniment to this ,among many such evils perpetrated in the current Doom laden situation we find ourselves falling into.

This blog started during the Credit crunch,and flourished through the insane Pandemic voluntary imprisonment years,and both of these are still with us to some extent...especially the debt,debt slaves which we are.Now,we have a very real nuclear threat like it was the 80's again.....not a bad thing in someways?.....World leaders with the IQ's of a slug pushing a malformed idiot's philosophy,in the words of one slug brained idiot....the rise and rise of Semi-Fascism.

On top of all that,galloping inflation, and an energy debt crisis spiraling exponentially out of control,where energy Bills are close to being more than a living wage.Its expensive, but strangely they don't seem to be running out of the stuff....if you've got the dosh there's an unlimited supply apparently!?

Environmental change is forgotten as priorities turn towards obtaining enough food to eat,and we're burning our houses to keep ourselves warm again.As our delightful Russian chum's are burning off 10 million dollars of unsold methane gas into the atmosphere every day!?.....we've never had it so bad,and are catching up World War 2 fast.

Here's the best part....and it's gonna get worse!.....We're DOOOOMED!

(see what I did there?)

Tracklist:

Gloom Side:
A1 Confusion (Intro)
A2 Life Lock
A3 Slave To Convention
A4 A Dream To Come True
A5 Drowning In The Mainstream
A6 Same Mind
A7 Relief
A8 After The Bomb
A9 Stop-Gap
A10 Scared

Shroom Side:
B1 Sick Joke
B2 Natural Abuse
B3 Exploitation
B4 Beat The Boss
B5 Money Drug
B6 Fear Of The Future
B7 No Religion
B8 Phobia For Change
B9 Multinationals
B10 Obscenity
B11 War Crimes

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