If you happened to be around during the 80s cold war era, constantly bracing yourself because you were panicked out of your little mind that every siren sound you heard in the distance was a four-minute warning before nuclear armageddon hit, you’d have first-person experience why thrash metal’s tensed, choppy riffs, were the true, physical sound of apocalyptic paranoia.
You might therefore, be a wee bit tired of the hordes of young ‘uns taking up the thrash mantle to goof off about beer kegs, buds and zombies while the news pumps out endless stories of impending doom. You might also wish someone would make thrash that actually sounds like the feral freakout that’s bound to occur when the shit really is about to hit the fan.
Coming from Brazil, where they already know a thing or two about stakes being high, and about creating raw, dirt-encrusted heavy metal with the actual texture of lived experience, all-female power trio Nervosa are worthy lineage-upholders to the likes of Sepultura and Sarcophago in that they play your-heart-in-their-mouth heavy metal with genuinely galvanising grit.
With a new album, Agony, due to charge out of the Napalm Records compound on May 20 in the manner of a pack of ravenous hyenas through a field full of family picnics, we have an exclusive preview in the distinctly unhygienic form of a video for the track Hostages. Set in a derelict hospital, wherein all three members look like the last surviving patients in throes of radiation sickness, the visuals are as visceral as the music itself.
“On this song,” say the band themselves, “we talk about a situation that unfortunately is pretty common here in Brazil, and i think in many other countries around the globe. Because of bad corrupt politicians that don’t take care properly of society’s basic needs, like quality health system for example, many people die on hospital aisles everyday. So we decided to picture this problem in a very ‘bloody’ way on the video, that is sadly not even close to the horror that happens in the real life of people that depend on public hospitals!”
This is thrash metal at the far end of the conviction scale, so throw on your bullet belts, raise a fist to the ozone-annihilated skies and lose the last of your shit to Hostages below!
Crawl across the wasteland to Nervosa’s Facebook page here!
And pre-order Agony here!
