Nails doesn’t deal with slow and painful deaths. The pain is there, but death comes quickly, a spray of bullets from close-range, a pock-marked body rendered to nothing but flesh and blood. Their acerbic, manic explorations of crust punk, grindcore, D-beat and the extremest edges of the metal universe are the soundtrack for a bank robbery gone wrong – marble floors covered in the sticky crimson red of murder, dripping hunks of greyish flesh mixed with the green of greed, ink-covered bills floating gently from the sky, an exploded bag of capitalism’s ultimate Hope Diamond. It all exists on the periphery of humankind, as if they’re just perched on the edge of life and death.
At the head of all of this, still living despite all the wounds, is Todd Jones, the singular vision behind one of the century’s premiere extreme metal acts. Nails hasn’t so much reinvented itself on their upcoming fourth album Every Bridge Burning as much as they’ve swapped their AK-47s for M-16s. While Jones may look behind him and see the bodies of his fellow denizens of death and destruction mixed with the victims of that very same bank heist, he’s picked up some new partners in crime on his way to the getaway car. This time, joined by Shelby Lermo of Ulthar on guitar, Carlos Cruz of Warbringer on drums, and Andrew Solis on bass, Todd Jones has metaphorically stepped over the bodies of his past and into the future. Unlike the spray of bullets that emanated from the former versions of Nails, this one is comprised of some top-notch sharpshooters, and while mutual destruction is still inevitable, this time it’s not quite as messy.
But violence, as always, is messy and Nails certainly haven’t smoothed down the edges. The band has always existed on the more cerebral side of extreme metal, sidling alongside such luminaries as Thou and Full of Hell, a motley crew of godfathers, biker-gang maniacs, and Charles Manson-like cult leaders. It’s not just that Nails is celebrating the destruction of mankind: they are breaking it down intellectually, creating a catastrophic curriculum for the justification of humanicide. And they do it so effectively, you find yourself wanting to take up the battle with them, no matter how reluctantly. You may not see yourself as a homicidal maniac, but it’s in there somewhere, whether you like it or not. It’s just a little bit closer to the surface with Todd Jones and his powerviolence brethren.
First song “Imposing Will” starts off the album in an absolute frenzy. Jones’s vocals seem as if they’ve been filtered through the almighty Anti-Auto-Tune, like he’s shoved his glottis through a fucking wood chipper. The lyrics are spat, hunks of flesh and blood splattering you in the face. ‘Impulsive thrill. Intent to kill. Force them under my control, imposing will,‘ Jones implores as the song breaks down into a rolling, mid-tempo (for Nails) romp. It’s the sound of the bank doors busting open, glass shattering, guns ablazing. There’s no option to succumb. You are dead fucking meat, and Nails are here to wreak holy hell for the next nineteen minutes. The song wastes no time as it seeps into “Punishment Map”, another relentless minute of head-smashing hardcore that ends in a classic Nails feedback drenched squeal, something no band in extreme music does better or more effectively.
Each Nails album is a bit like an MMA match, every song representing another way of possibly breaking a bone. If the opening songs are the one-two punch, then “Every Bridge Burning” is a kick to the motherfucking balls. It continues the sonic shift, with a pummeling beginning, Carlos Cruz’s drums about to burst at the seams. Again the band mixes it up rhythmically, with a mid-song breakdown that gives way to another sonic scream, the dying breath of another body, the snap of the loser’s femur poking through the flesh.
But it’s “Give Me the Painkiller” that really points to any artistic shift the band might be making, no matter how subtle. In some ways, it maybe one of the most confident, in your face songs Nails has ever recorded. It’s Motörhead punk rock at its heart, but the rest of the flesh and bones are full on NWOBHM and Germanic teutonic metal, with a juicy riff that pays homage to Accept‘s “Fast As Shark”. It even includes a frenetic, glorious ten-second guitar solo, which might be the first on any Nails album, and a chorus that you can kind of sing along with, within the constraints of a blood-covered killing machine.
“Lacking the Ability to Process Empathy” is a slow grind, lyrically expressing their seething hatred for humankind, as well as the inner turmoil that spurns such hatred. It’s one of the things that Nails does exceedingly well, this ability to outwardly hate and self-deprecate at the same time. This isn’t just pain for pain’s sake. It’s an innate darkness that few extreme metal bands can tap into, and Nails drives that stake right through the four chambers of your heart.
Next song “Trapped” is the soundtrack for getting your neck fucking snapped and your skull crushed by a steel-toed boot. And then it ends, 48 seconds of pure, vintage Nails.
“Made Up In Your Mind” picks up where “Trapped” leaves off, the band wiping the flesh and blood off the bottom of those boots so they can make sure there are no survivors, another relentless grindcore classic. “Dehumanized” features some of the fastest drumming from Carlos Cruz with some insane tom rolls. It’s straight-up old-school hardcore-infused thrash, with another pseudo-solo thrown in there before the inevitable breakdown into the double-kick and the predestined squeals of death at the end. The meat of the album, these songs showcase how well producer Kurt Ballou not only knows the band, but understands their trajectory over the past fifteen years. The production is muscular and economical, as Ballou continues to show that power left uncontrolled can lead one to the verge of insanity, a place where Nails sit comfortably atop the festering heap of bodies beneath them.
One thing you got to give Nails: these guys know how to end an album. The fact that they are one of the few bands in the extreme music world that know that it’s better to err on the side of brevity means they also know how to shut it down. “Lies”, the closer from their debut album, is a Bolt Thrower-esque exploration of heaviness and disdain, a sludgy, noisy romp into a world devoid of truth. “Suum Cuique”, the final track from 2013’s Abandon All Life, is equally sludgy, a sodden trudge through the body fluids and rotting flesh of the dead, a psychedelic, synthetic outro that serves as an introduction to the end as we know it. And, of course, the eight-minute opus “They Came Crawling Back” (EIGHT MINUTES!) that closes their last album, an audacious, all-encompassing clinic in what makes metal heavy fucking metal. All three songs understood the assignment: it’s not to cover your tracks, but to make sure those who stumble upon your handiwork of death and destruction know exactly who laid the land to waste. Like Richard Ramirez carving pentagrams into the hands of his victims, Nails always leave their mark.
“No More Rivers to Cross” is another epic closer from Nails, the band continuing to explore the world of doom, gloom and all the viscera that comes in between. Jones and Lermo’s guitars slink over the rumble of Solis’s bass and Cruz’s drums. The lyrics insist that Jones has no more time for your bullshit, and by ‘your’ he means the nine billion of us who crawl on the surface of this planet like a bunch of fucking rats. At the end of the day, the band isn’t rushing out the doors of the slaughterhouse. They are calmly stepping over the bodies, making sure each of them have left this mortal coil, and the world is one step closer to it’s Thanos-like conclusion. It’s another signature end to another powerhouse record from one of the genre’s best.
In a recent interview, Todd Jones wisely chose not to go into detail about why former band members John Gianelli and Taylor Young left the band, instead choosing to focus on the grim reality that faces bands that lose integral members of the core. But Every Bridge Burning insists that while those bridges may have been burnt, it doesn’t mean the mission has changed. The album shows that Nails is still very much at the forefront of extreme music, a noise-laden, explosive exploration of human pain. There’s a continuity to the band’s discography that’s laudable, a commitment to the extreme violence they perpetrate, and Every Bridge Burning continues this exploration. As long as human beings continue to be absolute assholes to each other, Nails will be here to document our insatiable lust for violence, hatred and pain, and – in some ways – we’re all a lot better off because of that.
