Genres: brutal prog, avant-garde jazz, mathcore (occasional harsh vocals, mostly instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: John Zorn, Car Bomb, The Dillinger Escape Plan
Country: France
Release date: 1 December 2023
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not well versed in brutal prog. Before I listened to this album, I would not have been able to even define the sound of the genre, and I’m still not certain that I’d be able to after listening to Ni’s recent output Fol Naïs which sees the band weave together the aforementioned genre of brutal prog, inflections of avant-garde jazz, as well as a very healthy helping of mathcore, the genre which served as my main point of reference as I attempted to comprehend all that Ni had to offer on their recent release.
As soon as the first riff of opening track “Zerkon” kicked into gear, I was reminded rhythmically of bands like Car Bomb and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Each subsequent flurry of notes is an off-kilter snapshot of some unidentifiable object from a seemingly impossible angle; try as I may to piece the images together, the result is always more puzzling than when I started. Ni then supplement this rhythmic intensity with equally chaotic melodic choices that see squealing guitars and groaning bass precariously juggled about yet always landing in a place that makes sense, at least within this album’s internal logic. This approach of rhythmic and melodic chaos takes up a large portion of the sound on Fol Naïs, but it is not the only trick Ni has up their sleeve. If it were, you’d be reading a much more negative review, instead you get to hear about just how hard Ni can groove.
Once again just like my favorite mathcore band Car Bomb, Ni are consistently able to find ways to take the chaos that they have crafted and meticulously yet efficiently pare it down to something that actually gets my head moving. To continue my example with “Zerkon”, after the tumultuous intro, the song steadily shifts into a pulsing polyrhythmic drum and bass groove whereupon the guitars are free to explore more textural sonic spaces, which mostly end up being spacey shrieks and wails. Moments like this where I could actually somewhat wrap my head around what I was hearing were what kept me coming back to Fol Naïs; these were the moments that elevated this album from technically impressive to actually somewhat enjoyable.
I also shouldn’t forget to mention the electronic elements that, while rare, were another contributor to my enjoyment. As soon as they were introduced in “Brusquet”, the unique way in which they mesh with the incessant drumming attack provided a clever way of simultaneously temporally locking in this album’s sound and providing some textural diversity, something I desperately needed, especially as the album stretched into its back half.
You may find that I found this album a bit of a slog slightly surprising; after all, it’s only forty-eight minutes, about as ideal of an album length as I could imagine, but there is just so much technical wankery constantly being thrown at me that I inevitably check out during my listening. Although Ni themselves do seem self-aware of this fact–the album art does depict two men huffing each others’ farts–it doesn’t change the fact that my favorite moments are when I could just actually comprehend what I was hearing. I do suspect that if I were to listen dozens of times over, I would perhaps get my bearings, alleviating this issue for me as it did for many mathcore bands prior, but as of now I find Fol Naïs a slog, only broken up by a few moments of groovy genius.
Recommended tracks: Brusquet, Zerkon, Cathelot
You may also like: PoiL, Seven Impale
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Dur et Doux – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Ni is:
– Anthony Béard (guitar, scream)
– François Mignot (guitar)
– Nicolas Bernollin (drums)
– Benoit Lecomte (bass)
– Simon Drouhin (boite à bourdon on Cathelot)
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