Toronto duo Nadja-- drone explorer Aidan Baker and bassist Leah Buckareff-- may be the best band in the world doing something exciting right now with Jesu/Godflesh/Napalm Death/etc. man Justin Broadrick's doom metal past. Touched, the band's second full-length album for Alien8 after a series of limited CD-R releases on other labels, finds Nadja taking the best of Broadrick's lessons-- grand entrances, indelible weight, multi-part slow motion-- and applying it to a fierce musical restlessness. Nadja somehow churns out "doom metal" for the post-rock and noise sets. Touched is as strident as it is meticulous, its Swans sense of purpose and volume attached to an almost symphonic use of motion. Even when things are still, there's an intense undercurrent just below the surface. That's as true in classical music as it is in some of the best noise, and on the explosive Touched, Nadja bridges its taste for both.
Take note of the opening, roaring up from a metal-flake drone that recalls Tony Conrad's most serrated edges. That tumbles into a lock-and-stomp dirge, rhythmic thunder collapsing onto everything it can find for the first 12 minutes. With gravity at work, mammoth layers topple over one another only to seek high ground later. The static that introduces "Incubation/Metamorphosis" is equaled by Baker's multi-tracked vocals and later swallowed completely by the feedback and saturated drums of closer "Flowers of Flesh". But when the album ends, that static is one of the few sounds that makes it out alive. It's tempting to call these 13- and 18-minute pieces smears, but that's too impressionistic or obtuse. These are selective stretches, and Touched is about arcs and waves: Nadja can be as heavy as the best industrial or doom band you've ever heard. Then again, sometimes they sound like they've taped a contact mic to some great abyss and let the tape roll with the soft murmurs of souls. That liminal space is perfect and magnetic.
Indeed, Central to Touched's success is Nadja's mastery of dynamics through suspense, release, and relief: The first 43 minutes often roar and squall, but-- even at their loudest-- there's the distinct feeling that the sound is peaking just below the climax. The idea plays out in distended fade-aways and transitions: "Stays Demons" marches along a high plateau, commanding drums and overdriven slabs of bass overrunning Baker's effects-smothered vocals. But during "Flowers of Flesh", Nadja finally lets things go. The drums are colossal and the noise-- aggregated synthesizers, processors, and guitar tracks, stacked into a perfect beast-- ruins the long-sustained build in the best sense. Things explode onto more menacing planes, a remarkable climax borne of self-imposed restraint. Baker's vocals are sinister now, like Xasthur's Malefic back inside the Black One coffin, attached to a strange cocktail of morphine and caffeine concentrate. "Flowers of Flesh" is meant to wreck you, and it probably will.
This is release and relief, though. For everything that "Flowers of Flesh" razes, the short untitled fifth track offers to rebuild. Quiet and consonant, Touched ultimately suggests the whole thing may have been a nightmare. Or maybe this is just the eye of the storm. Either way, the path to solace is full on both high drama and deliverance.
