Over the course of their seven years in action, Nails have dedicated themselves to exploring the isolating nature of existential malaise. They’ve called their two full length LPs Unsilent Death and Abandon All Life, and on those two records, the Oxnard, California trio have perfected their defiant approach to the yawning void. They preach fatalist atheism or enact brutal masochism while diving headfirst into hardcore's darkest corners (grindcore, powerviolence, and d-beat just to name a few), and that’s all in the course of just a minute or two. It's music for when you look at life and see little of value, for when you're feeling bitter and alone in the face of chaos. Vocalist Todd Jones made his intentions clear at the peak of the 2012’s “No Surrender”: “My goal/Cause you pain.”
To that end, You Will Never Be One of Us will live up to the expectations of anyone who’s experienced a Nails album before. Eight of the record’s ten tracks are under two minutes long, and each is built around monochromatic blasts of distortion, double kick drums, Jones’ paper-shredder growls, and depressing track titles to match (see: “Life Is a Death Sentence,” “Violence Is Forever”) . The high-speed anxiety of tracks like “Made to Make You Fail” are as volatile and propulsive as jetfuel. It’s as hard as ever to make out Jones’ lyrics, but producer Kurt Ballou (of Converge, who also produced the band’s other two efforts) has gotten better at shaping his guttural abstractions. Even if it’s unclear exactly what he’s saying, the effect is crystal: he hurts and so will you.
Even in the record’s title, however, Nails have made it clear that their darkness is now just a little more complicated than the music they’ve made in the past. The video for the record’s title track opens with a host of friends (including Baroness’ John Baizley) uttering the ominous phrase, but it sounds natural regardless of who says it, as if anyone is capable of owning the sentiment as long as they’re willing to get in the right mindset. Though it’s a negative statement, defined in opposition, Jones has said in an interview that he intends it as “inclusive.” Each track on the record can be read as an invitation to join him in his unsettled meditations.
Knowing that you’re welcomed in, some of the differences between this record and those that preceded it become apparent. You Will Never Be One of Us feels less like a brick wall. This is most evident in the eight-minute closer “They Come Crawling Back,” which experiments with al sorts of unfamiliar sounds for Nails: There's frosty tremolo picking, bleak doom riffs, and siren-like leads before building into the sort of off-to-the-races hardcore they’re known for. It’s all of metal’s most downcast corners shoved together into a single eight minutes that fades slowly to nothingness. It’s a little something for anyone included in the “us” in the title, for everyone who’s ever found meaning in a flurry of fists in a mosh pit.
