Nailbiter- Abused LP (2003)
The other day I was in a record store, dressed in my far-from-punk “everyday” clothes, and about to purchase some very un-hardcore 1970’s soft rock, when I became aware of the presence of a gaggle of youngish hardcore dudes flipping through the new arrival bin nearby. They were audibly nerding out, trying to impress each other, and throwing out the periodic “Do you have *this*?” I decided unwisely to join in. “Excuse me, good sirs, but I couldn’t help but overhear that you are a group of hardcore enthusiasts… perchance are any of you so unfortunate as not to have [classic early 2000s hardcore LP]?” I held out an album that they had all evidently flipped past. I soon realized my mistake. They were uninterested, they had it on mp3 but weren’t interested in shelling out $8, they preferred nowadays bands… I felt as though I were a dapper gentleman recommending Duke Ellington to a bunch of back-to-Africa free jazz cats in the 1960s.
Point being: a decade is a strange time in the life of a record. For those who bought it the first time around, the music is still situated in the context and associations of that time, much as dinosaur DNA is trapped within an insect suspended in amber in “Jurassic Park”—it is too much entangled in some other entity to get at the thing-itself. On the other hand, the cycle of reviving trends and reissues runs much longer than a decade, so newer and younger fans will just find it passé, not even threatening or contemporary. When I got into hardcore, this was how I felt about bands like Spazz and Nausea: not old enough to be classics, but still the “old guard” in relation to the cool new bands.
The band I want to present today… was never cool. Nailbiter came out of London (but with members from Italy and Brazil) in the early 2000s with two split releases (a 7” with Viimeinen Kolonna, an LP with Destruccion) and an LP (“Abused”), before dissolving amidst rumors of an ill-fated stylistic departure (read: the dreaded classic rock trajectory). They have recently reunited and played a few shows in Europe, this being the occasion for the reissue of their early material by UK label La Vida Es Un Mus. But as unsold copies of their LP can still be found sitting in New York record stores, such a reissue is perhaps unwarranted stateside. Nonetheless, any chance to revisit this unappreciated classic is welcome.
I can only speculate as to why Nailbiter were never more popular. They must have been an odd fit within the British punk scene, since their music is resolutely “international” (dominated by Swedish and Japanese influences). Matters were surely not helped by the confusing cover art of their most widely distributed record: a Boris Vallejo fantasy illustration of a naked woman standing in the fiery maw of an armored demon. On top of this, song-titles like “Dribbling Hunter” and “Steel and Stone” only reinforced the Conan the Barbarian aesthetic. This couldn’t have been more out of step with the audience at the time. Why couldn’t they have just given us photos of napalm victims and lyrics about George W. Bush? A black-and-white photo of the band wearing bullet belts with crimped and bleached hair wouldn’t have hurt. They could have sold millions!
One can only postulate that Nailbiter didn’t find an audience due to these superficial aesthetic reasons, because their music is the coolest thing imaginable. Their sound is basically a combination of the over-the-top guitar leads and distorted vocals of Japanese hardcore bands like Death Side, with the chugging metallic grind of later Anti-Cimex (whose song “Daughters of Pride” is covered here, making the comparison official). Nailbiter were simultaneously a) a masterful blend of somewhat obscure and foreign influences, and b) the least subtle band in existence. This is immense, head-banging, orc-bashing metal punk—something like if High on Fire dug Battalion of Saints instead of Celtic Frost. It’s fun, it’s ridiculous, it’s larger than life, and yet never corny or bombastic. Somehow a song like “No Return” manages to be both lumbering and bouncy simultaneously. The least I can say is, it is better than a hundred other records attempting the same fantasy Motör-punk vibe. I rank them higher than Sacrilege, an obvious predecessor and “classic.” My review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the guitar solos here, which are are somewhere in between those of Bathory and Ace Frehley. They are truly memorable and rocking instead of (as is so often the case) strained by-the-books contortions to remind me that they are rocking and to reinforce some overwrought aesthetic. Now is perhaps the time to say that the band’s subsequent material (demo-only), which took a more Thin Lizzy direction, is totally awesome for precisely that reason, although never likely to endear them to an already-wary hardcore audience. These leaden, unattractive crustlords were not doing their “musical careers” any favors; on the other hand, riffs this huge don’t get written every day.
