Getting older is really strange, and as a person who has definitely passed some time, I can attest that it’s a regular occurrence when you look back and wonder how it’s been like 30 years since you graduated high school. For example, obviously. But for me, there are times in my life where I wish I could lock myself, and funny enough, it’s not when I was appreciably younger. But that’s not possible.

Metallic destroyers Nott consists of just two members—vocalist/guitarist/bassist Tyler Campbell and drummer Julia Geaman—and both have had uprooting sojourns to where they are now. Their incredible new record is called “Hiraeth,” a Welsh word with no direct meaning but that the band posits as standing for the longing for what once was and to which one cannot go back. That’s a devastating idea, but it’s not foreign to most people. We all long for a time when meanings for certain things were imprinted in our brains and that probably seems like the best times we ever had. Accompanying that thinking is a record that is impossibly heavy, sometimes in ways that you’d think humans couldn’t realize, but here we are. It’s a monster of a record, and it both kills with force and draws you into the theme.

“Torn” starts atmospherically, but it doesn’t take long to turn ugly as beastly playing and deep, engorging growls begin to do ample damage. The playing gets fiery and savage, pulling you under without mercy, the growls corroding flesh, growing staggeringly heavy as the slow torture finally releases its grip.  “Stasis” is gargantuan, a total monster scraping across the earth, Campbell somehow sounding even more inhuman. The aura is muddy and gashing, the drums let loose and completely destroy, and the growls sicken, making the contents of your stomach thrash wildly, the final blasts pushing the bile and acid to burst onto the pavement. “Null” is a brief breather, but it also lends no rest as the weird transmission makes everything feel unsettling, the eerie guitars summoning a fog that blasts into “Rend” that completely envelopes. Wild howls slash as the bass flexes its muscles, massive jarring heavily taxing your nervous system. Snarling energy splashes with muddy waves, and the guitars truck hard, sludging and marring, decimating until the playing finally drops its last.

“Stare” is fiery and deadly, a pulverizing experience that leans heavily into your psyche and refuses to pull back. Mechanical terror opens its steely jaws, and an infernal implosion rampages, spilling outright ferocity and brutality and amplifying them to a ridiculous degree. “Writhe” lets sounds swirl and your imagination travel, and then the track fully tears open, the shrieks raining down poison and chaos. The clobbering madness is suffocating, and then the sounds ease, unleashing steam that wilts flesh. The power corrupts all over with a barreling assault, the growls hammer, and everything feels like it’s boiling in acid, flesh falling from bone. The title track ends the proceedings, and it’s an instant assault, a blinding serving of hell that slaughters souls. Slashing and urgent, the stomping almost feels personal as the power runs amok, and even a brief respite is enough to promote healing as the senses are smashed, and aggressive fury buries faces in the dirt.

Nott is impossibly heavy, which always sound ridiculous to say on a metal site, but this band knows another level many other bands do not. “Hiraeth” has emotional undertones from its title and the intent the band puts behind it, but taking on the music feels like mental and physical tumult, a struggle to survive where the surroundings feel uninhabitable. This is a weighty experience, a record that takes its toll on you and leaves a battered, stretched human behind.

For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/NottMusicOfficial

To buy the album, go here: https://silentpendulumrecords.com/products/nott-hiraeth

For more on the label, go here: https://silentpendulumrecords.com/