• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Of all of the groovy, tough-as-nails metal out there since Pantera decided to change their style and forget all about their past...well, this is another one of them. Nerve are an Italian band who play a very heavy-handed hybrid of cold, technical groove metal and a few splices of modernized Death Metal in the mix as well, and this is their second album, Hate Parade. Filled with primal, ferocious screaming and Earth-shattering guitar cacophonies, Nerve are out to destroy your eardrums, and they make no apologies for that.

This is basically just really loud and angry sounding. It's just about as cathartic as it gets for this kind of music without leaving the realm of metal and going into a more hardcore direction. Everything is in your face, nothing is subtle, and nothing needs to be. The whole entire point of this is to smash the listener's face into the gravel and rub it around until they're bled dry – well, in a musical way. The songwriting is pretty tightly woven, having a precision and accuracy about it that makes this that much more fun to listen to, as you can tell the band was really trying.

I have to say the production is one of my favorite things about this, as I just cannot fault it at all. Everything sounds the way it should – the guitars are loud and full, the drums are brutal but never take away the spotlight from the rest of the music and even the bass is as sharp as razor wire, and it all just comes together into this maniacal, yet coherent torrential display of hatred. On songs like "Mescaline," the bashing "My Inferno" and the pulverizing "Fake Deaf," the band is tight and memorable as hell, with metallic riffs and hardcore aggression combining for an unholy assault on the senses.

But there are some problems, too – like what is up with the clean vocals? They're better than I expected, but they still have a very weird, syrupy texture to them that I find annoying and grating. It makes songs like the very odd ballad "How to Fix a Broken Heart" or "Shelter" that much more irritating to listen to. And the song "I Am My Own God" has a very bouncy chorus that just comes off as more annoying than anything when screamed the way it is. Sticks in my head for all the wrong reasons. Actually, let's just go with the vocals in general being annoying. This kind of screaming I can tolerate from time to time, especially in bands as cool as Converge, but here it just does nothing for me.

I might not be in the mood for this very often, but hey, it's not that bad at all. Nerve is playing the genre they want to play in a really solid manner, and that's all you can say about it. If you like this kind of hardcoreish groove metal, then you'll probably dig the fuck out of this band. Me, I can appreciate it for what it is, but it's not something I'll listen to every day.