The junction between ambient music and heavy or extreme metal seems like one of the most fertile grounds in music for the past couple years — just witness the rising (if still decidedly underground) popularity of groups like Sunn O))), the revival of Earth, the fascinating explorations by new bands like the recently reviewed Æthenor (whose Deep In Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light is much more ambient than metal, but still has a definite affinity with the latter). Nadja is a band in this subgenre that I was unaware of until this album appeared in the catalog of alien8 Recordings, a label that is perpetually on my radar thanks to their work releasing great stuff by the likes of Shalabi Effect, Tanakh, Acid Mothers Temple, and more.Nadja have less to do with any of these bands than they do with the aforementioned Sunn O))). But their brand of doomy ambient metal is much less static and glacial than that band's — instead, by incorporating beautiful melody into their crushing riffs, with Touched they achieve something that's like a cross between the bleak doom of Sunn O))) and the emotional grandiosity of, say, Isis. It's almost as if this is drone-metal for post-rock fans. Instead of the oppressive gloom of most ambient metal acts, the mood in Touched is quite the opposite: it's almost soothing.
Opener "Mutagen" is instructive; it begins with slowly building white noise before hi-hat announces the entrance of a slow-moving, absolutely crushing riff. The guitar sound is monstrous, but so fuzzed-out that its power is much more cinematic emotion than it is raw anger. The four main pieces on this album, ranging from 10 to 18 minutes in length, basically use this massive guitar sound for all it's worth, with minor variations in tempo and mood. Very importantly for music like this, the chord progressions are logical and effective, never quite predictable or boring, but always perfectly placed.
Guitars aside, there are also vocals; and unusually for music like this, they are mostly clean — buried in the mix so as to be nearly unintelligible, but clean. There's little in the way of death-metal growling here, and the effect of the vocals is, again, more soothing than anything else. "Flowers of Flesh" is the exception; as the most aggressive song of the four, its vocals are similarly more strident, but despite the rawer feel of this song, it still manages to evoke emotions closer to those of Isis (circa Panopticon) than those of Godflesh.
Touched goes down smoother than most any metal album I've heard. That may not sound like a compliment, but it is: creating music of such heavy power, yet making it beautiful and even relaxing, is no small feat.
review by Brandon Wu — 5-31-07 —
