People often wonder why Philadelphian band Nothing are so damn loud. In the case of many artists, the volume stems from a preoccupation with negativity, misanthropy and the human condition, drawn from the band’s own personal experiences. In the case of Nothing, that volume, rather than a selling point, is the only way the band has been able to translate the difficulty of real-life into musical form.
Philadelphia’s Nothing – ‘Tired Of Tomorrow’, their beautifully profound follow-up to 2014’s widely-acclaimed ‘Guilty Of Everything’. Recorded over the course of a month at Studio 4 with Will Yip (Circa Survive, Title Fight), ‘Tired Of Tomorrow’ is a modern, nihilistic take on the triumphant fuzzed-out guitar rock of the 90’s, replete with huge hooks and brooding melodies. Much like the events it’s based on, the album displays an unparalleled balance of opposites and contradictions, rife with sweet-and-sour themes, downcast grooves, infectious choruses, and blissfully expansive washes of sound. With ‘Tired Of Tomorrow’, Nothing have worked the deepest influences of their youth and maturation into a confident, memorable album that is sure to soothe old wounds while simultaneously opening up new ones.
On their fourth album The Great Dismal, Philadelphia shoegaze outfit Nothing triumph with both bold and subtle sounds. The band have always excelled at details and dynamics, and they deliver here without fail. The final passages of opening track “A Fabricated Life” really cement the album’s prodigious and intimate themes: “Long before the fall / Did we have it all along? / Sing the same old songs / Beat the same old tired drum / But what else can I ask for? / I’m nauseous from the ride / Degeneration in the wind / A fabricated life.” These moods of erosion, numbness and uncertainty pervade the album, and their mythical soundscapes bolster the weight of these feelings and elevate their sense of urgency.
The Great Dismal watches as humanity is put through the wringer and responds with godlike, pummelling guitars and metaphorical, emotionally revealing lyrics. One minute, they’re contemplating themes of love, reason, perception and death on a grand scale, and in simple terms, and the next, they’re marvelling at people’s reaction to rain (“Isn’t it strange / Watching people / Try and outrun rain”). It’s a sweltering expulsion of anxieties and a thoughtful chronicling of our species’ downfall.
Nothing return with their highly anticipated new full-length, The Great Dismal. Recorded entirely during quarantine, The Great Dismal explores existentialist themes of isolation, extinction, and human behaviour in the face of 2020’s vast wasteland. The Great Dismal came out October 30th on LP/CD/CS/Digital via Relapse Records.
Philadelphia rock band Nothing has a way of putting words and sounds to the rock-bottom moments in life. Consider the title of their wide-eyed and beautiful fourth album—The Great Dismal and see if you can think of a better way to sum up the combination of slow heartbreak, frustrated ambition, and deadening boredom that took up so much of our emotional bandwidth this year. In their best moments, Nothing does us one better, taking these states of psychic purgatory and blowing them up widescreen, so that they feel pregnant with a significance that is hard to put into language but also darkly addicting.
On The Great Dismal, which they recorded during the first few weeks of the pandemic, they let the guitars do a lot of the talking; from the wailing bends on the “April Ha Ha” to the shimmering, oceanic tones on “Blue Mecca,” the shoegaze influence is more apparent than ever, rendered with a clarity of signal that makes every texture pop. Even frontman Domenic “Nicky” Palermo’s voice sounds more feathery than usual, which somehow makes his words cut even closer to the bone when he startles us with a line like “Trapped / In skin that fits me / But never fit me / Was never mine.”
The thing I love about Nothing and their new album The Great Dismal is you don’t know what to expect as each song takes a different twist and turn. Are they Godflesh, The Cocteau Twins, Rorschach… what the fuck is this? Every time I listen and think I have it figured out they switch moods making it a brand new record spinning in a swan dive from your mind into your soul. While I don’t advocate drugs, Nothing makes one appreciate hallucinogens while braving a new flight. The first single off the album, “Say Less,” is a great introduction to what you’re about to receive, and it’s only available on widescreen.
On August 24th, Philadelphian band Nothing will return with a new studio album titled, Dance on the Blacktop. Due out through Relapse Records, it follows 2016’s Tired of Tomorrow and serves as the band’s third LP overall.
For the nine-track effort, the noise-rock outfit enlisted the talents of producer John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth). Tracking took place at Dreamland Studios in Woodstock, New York, following 23 days spent demoing in a “coffin-sized NYC apartment”. Much of Dance on the Blacktop draws on the life of founding member Domenic Palermo. In particular, Palermo was influenced by his time spent behind bars and the recent diagnosis of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease found in people with serious head injuries. Throughout the LP, there are songs that tell stories of self-loathing and self-destruction, as well as paranoia and anxiety stemming from his new illness.
The title, which is prison slang for a fight or altercation, is a “symbolic interpretation of the album’s philosophy.” Palermo elaborates in a statement, saying, “I’ve learned to bask in the absurdity of it all — in the chaos… There’s beauty in the confusion if you can learn to hold its hand.”
Philadelphian band Nothing have shared a cover of Nirvana’s muted and melancholic “Something In The Way,” the last track on the band’s seminal 1991 album Nevermind (second-last if you count the secret song “Endless, Nameless”). The cover will be included on Robotic Empire’s second Nirvana tribute album, “Whatever Nevermind”, which is due out on Record Store Day and features contributions from La Dispute, Touche Amore, and Torche among others. Last year, the label put out In Utero: A Tribute. “Something In The Way” is already one of the gloomier tracks on Nevermind, and Nothing aren’t trying to redress it in any particular way. Their cover features a lone piano delicately treading over ambient room-tone sounds — there might even be a violin thrown in there too, in case you weren’t already weeping.
Nothing’s cover of ‘Something In The Way’, off Robotic Empire’s second Nirvana tribute release. “Whatever Nevermind” sees a diverse range of bands covering the “Nevermind” album in full.
Instead of their trademark whitewash of guitar layers, NOTHING opts for a starker approach to the somber classic, with piano and vibrant vocals up front in Will Yip’s beautiful mix.
On April 18th, Robotic Empire will release their second Nirvana tribute, “Whatever Nevermind”, which features a number of bands covering the 1991’s iconic album “Nevermind” in full (for those of you somehow wondering, yes, this is the record with the naked baby on the cover). Here we premiere a cut, which sees Philadelphian band Nothing taking on “Something in the Way,” one of the album’s more somber tracks.
Nirvana nostalgia may feel like it’s a bit played out these days—we’re at the point where we’re getting critical essays about the critical essays about the critical essays about what the Seattle band means—but that doesn’t take away from Cobain and company’s incredible influence. The fact that in the year 2015, nearly two decades after Kurt Cobain killed himself, crews of young musicians are still regularly coming together to pay tribute to his work is nothing short of moving. In Nothing’s cover, the band proves themselves worthy. Vocalist Brandon Setta delivers, his trembling tenor voice—above a slow building burn of guitars by Dominic “Nicky” Palermo and piano by Mikele Edwards—somehow carrying the weight of the deeply emotional song, driven by nonsensical lyrics weirdly full of a titanic amount of self-analysis. Cobain was the expert of looking inward and trying to figure out just what the fuck was going on in his head. He made music because he needed to—not necessarily because he wanted to.
Nothing put out a hell of a record this year. “Guilty Of Everything” (which I’d also award “Best Album Title” in 2014) sounds like the record My Bloody Valentine would have made if it hadn’t disappeared after releasing the classic “Loveless” in 1991. Nothing, which hails from Philadelphia, knows how to strike a startling balance between gritty noise rock and meditative drones. “Guilty Of Everything” came out in March and pretty much owned the first half of my year. Similar to thier debut release its a record I keep coming back too, wonderful
Philadelphia alt-reality merchants Nothing follow up the excellent Relapse Records debut “Guilty of Everything” — with a split 12-inch on Run For Cover Records alongside heavy shoegazers Whirr. (The release also features etched b-side/full-length studio doc DVD…) hereis the video for one of those tracks, “Chloroform”.
Nothing, taken from the album “Guilty Of Everything” is the debutalbum released by the American Shoegazing band Nothing . It was released in March through Relapse Records. The band’s musical style has been described as a mixture of ’90’s shoegazing, noise rock, and slowcore. It has also been additionally categorized as “heavy dream-pop” Nevertheless, the band’s sound distances itself from other shoegazing acts with its loudness and heaviness, being compared to the styles of My Bloody Valentine, The Smashing Pumpkins and Dinosaur Jnr The band’s style also “stays current by also giving nods to the post Indie Rock , the band’s use of “towering distorted guitars, soaring falsettos and slamming, snare-heavy percussion .
New York-based musician Sheare and described his music quite enthusiastically as “irresistible”, “glowing” and “ludicrously catchy”. His new single “Nothing” deserves similar praise. Revolving around a radiant synth hook, “Nothing” is a luscious piece of synth pop that seems to be written with Festival crowd singalong in mind. Watch the excellent video for the song’s mesmerising stop-motion video.
Whirr seem to be the new big shoegaze band with the new album “Sway” released in September, An American band from the San Francisco bay area formed in 2010 Nick Bassett the guitarist also played in “Deafhaven” with their sound and style compared to My Bloody Valentine. The band toured with the “Nothing” with Bassett playing Bass with the band whilst touring as a result members of both bands formed a side project called “Death Of Lovers” Bassett has also started another project with former Whirr vocalist Alexandra Morte called “Camera Shy”
The Fat Angel Sings 