Abandon All Life

In the 17 or so minutes it takes to listen to Abandon All Life, Nails do everything in their power to absolutely savage the listener, launching a musical assault so intensely volatile that one must either submit to its fury or be swept aside by it. Filled end to end with grindcore insanity and covered in a sheen of sonic grime (thanks to Converge guitarist and engineer extraordinaire Kurt Ballou), the album is an exercise in relentlessness, offering no quarter and asking for none in return as it stampedes from track to track on a merciless metal rampage. If Abandon All Life was a longer album, listening to it might be an exercise in aural masochism, but with its compact running time, it instead feels like a whirlwind trip through some kind of nightmare landscape that lasts just long enough to feel its effects, but ends before any sort of lasting physical or psychological effects set in. While Nails might not be in line with any of the trends in popular metal, an album like this that's able to take the extreme parts of the human experience and focus them into music is what metal is all about. Boundaries are not just being pushed here, they're being utterly destroyed, and whether or not it has enough breakdowns for people to mosh to not only isn't a concern, it's a contemptible idea amidst the sort of chaotic devastation Nails bring to bear on their listeners. ~ Greg Heaney