★★★★★
Holy shit! I feel like the world's greatest crypto-zoologist who just stumbled upon a mythical man-beast named Clarence who has a penchant for gnashing the bones of Italian widows between his teeth that are shaped like the ghosts from Pac-man. Nails' harder-than-Fuck new album Unsilent Death has been making all sorts of carnal love on my face since the homey Roy C. introduced me to this 14 or so minute exercise in sassitude. It is metal as all shit...
- www.syffal.com
2014-02-01
★★★★★
Just so that you know what kind of thing you're dealing with here: if this review was to echo the record it's reviewing then it would be a) one paragraph long, b) written in ALL CAPS and c) tell you to go fuck yourself at the end. Abandon All Life kicks off with zero foreplay: first track 'In Exodus' slams out of the speakers with a rattle of drums, grinding guitars and a screamed battle cry. And we're off...
- drownedinsound.com
2013-04-15
★★★★★
Nails are making some of the most thrillingly extreme music right now but the California quartet is difficult to recommend casually. They cram their brief, constantly shifting tracks with a chaotic blend of hardcore, D-Beat, grindcore, powerviolence, and death metal. It's complex music that plows ahead while moving internally in dozens of directions.
That said, technical descriptions don't capture what they do so well...
- pitchfork.com
2013-04-04
★★★★★
Picture the scene from Groundhog Day, when the clock clicks from 5:59 to 6:00, and Sonny and Cher once again welcome Bill Murray into his temporal prison. Now imagine that instead of I Got You Babe, the radio plays a succession of downtuned metal riffs and a man screaming incomprehensible gibberish in his ear. That's what Abandon All Life is like...
- www.musicomh.com
2013-04-04
★★★★★
No one ever said that Nails were easy listening. But while the band seem to strive to sound as mean and nasty as possible, they've always kept the hook alive in their music. Perhaps that's why they draw heavily from both hardcore punk and death metal. On one side they utilize a full throttle, ripping energy attack. But on the other, and unlike so many hardcore bands, they remember to keep the riffs in the music, instead of just reducing themselves to a noisy mass...
- www.punknews.org
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Southern Lord's crust/punk/hardcore nepotism has reached saturation point, to the extent that, over the last number of years, this label has signed band after band and released record after record around this uncompromising sound. In general circumstances, this oversaturation would amount to the label's death knell. But the crux of this rests upon the fact that the records Southern Lord have released have been of the highest quality...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
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...
- www.allmusic.com
2013-05-06
★★★★★
"This isn't the type of album that will sit proudly in its own little section of Best Buy; no, this is an album so venomous that any retailer would shit themselves at the very thought of Nails out on display." The only possible way to describe the breathless brutality of Nails' "Unsilent Death" is by giving a visual example. Imagine a horrific car accident, with metal and glass strewn everywhere, and bodies lying on the pavement. Now imagine a train coming through and crashing into the pile-up...
- www.metalunderground.com
2010-12-21
★★★★★
NOW ON VINYL TOO! And in a super heavy gatefold jacket to boot! A record this short should probably get an equally short review, just don't want to sell Nails short, cuz for what their record lacks in length, it makes up for in sheer crushing ferocity...
- aquariusrecords.org
2010-11-08
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