Album review: Nadja

An ambient metal band named after a surrealist novel about a woman screaming out her days in an asylum shouldn’t be an easy listen. But while ghost-like singer and distortion-sculptor Aidan Baker and cavity-prolapsing bass-monger Leah Buckareff produce a monstrous noise on this covers album, what they do is also beautiful and at times even delicate. While their version of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Only Shallow’ sounds exactly the same only much more so,
the unexpected choices work best. Slayer are given a dignified, sepulchral makeover, Elliott Smith is imagined as one of the four horsemen and A-Ha are recast as angels eulogising the second coming. Dazzling.

John Doran

More on this artist:
Nadja NME Artist Page
Nadja MySpace

8 out of 10