Nothing Is Real - 'Desert Of Illusions'

Nothing Is Real - 'Desert Of Illusions'

NIR is the brainchild of the super-prolific Nicholas Turner, who also plays in grindcore band Mouldering Vibration, and it's their second album in six months. If you've heard the previous releases ('Unnamed', 'Give Me Your Energy', 'Only The Wicked Are Pure' and last year's 'Pain Is Joy') you'll know that their sound is unmistakeable. And every one of their albums is an improvement on the last.
The title track opens up subtly with some accoustic guitar that brings to mind Uncle Acid. Like a horror film, it builds up tension until the guitars come crashing down like a tonne of lead. Again the drums sound wonderfully real, overlaid with a beefy and authoritative guitar. The riffs are so satisfying that you won't notice the minutes racing by. The pessimism of the last three albums is still here, but there's a lot more power and rage in the mixture. They have chosen the same production values as the last album - all the knobs are on the same settings - but the pace is more variable and the drums are more upbeat this time, introducing blast beats in places, and a double kick drum that thunders like a machine gun. The lead guitar here is truly apocalyptic, like Megadeth's 'Into The Lungs Of Hell'.
'Wasteland Of Lost Souls' sounds as ominous as the title suggests, conjuring a post-apocalyptic landscape of burned out buildings and rotting plastic, with wasted figures in gas masks staggering out of the smog. The riffs on this are some of the most massive slabs of bombast you'll ever hear.
'Clawing At My Essence' is an unsettling accoustic piece that leads into 'False Mirages Of Hope'. This starts off optimistically enough, but the hope lasts only about a minute before the brutal power-riffs nail you to the floor again, and a burst of blast beats in the 3rd minute takes things to a level of ferocity previously unexplored by the band.
'Vital Confrontation' starts with a guitar solo similar to the one at the end of the title track, and some spooky Hammer Horror piano and keyboard gives it a suitably gothic atmosphere. This song conveys a strong sense of dread and impending doom, very much in tune with the times we are living in.
'Embracing Of Self' brings us to the end of this doomfeast. It starts by bringing you so close to the accoustic guitar that you can hear the strings rattle on the wood. There's a sense of proximity in the sound that makes you feel like you're in the same room with the band. Like the whole album, this song is bipolar in its pacing, changing mood constantly as it plays with the listener's mind.
You might think that the doom scene has become saturated in recent years, but there aren't any other doom bands who capture the gloom of the times as Nothing Is Real do.
'Desert Of Illusions' is available now to pre-order. J