The idea had every reason to surprise: to bring together Full of Hell, a grinding machine of grindcore and noise, and Nothing, goldsmiths of a cottony, melancholy shoegaze. When No Birds Sang realises this alliance of opposites, and the result confounds the odds. The critics (an 82 average across nine reviews) hail a record that finds a common language where one expected only a collision.
Rather than juxtapose their aesthetics, the two bands fuse them. Full of Hell temper their violence, Nothing harden their reverie, and from this meeting is born a dense, misty music where walls of saturated guitars dissolve into atmospheric layers. The record advances like a heavy dream, between aggression and caress.
What seduces is this way of making melody and noise, softness and brutality, cohabit. The voices alternate murmur and scream, the production drowns the whole in a halo recalling the best of shoegaze while retaining the weight of sludge. One thinks of a soundtrack of mourning, a slow crossing of fog.
The record does not quite escape the flaw of this kind of exercise: the balance remains fragile, and some passages struggle to reconcile the two worlds, as if each band were pulling the blanket toward itself. The fusion is beautiful, but not always perfect.
Verdict: 8/10. A bold, successful collaboration proving that metal’s extremes can dialogue. A record of mist and fury, of a troubled, unexpected beauty.
