Nervosa: Perpetual Chaos

Bringing us a brand new album in addition to a brand new line-up, the now multinational (formerly Brazilian) Nervosa lay before us Perpetual Chaos. Guitarist Prika Amaral has, in very short order, assembled three other supremely talented and metal-as-fuck women who were surely hell-bent on showing that this band is refreshed, re-energized, and a whole new thrash metal beast.

Nervosa's previous three albums were thrash metal akin to what other throwback bands such as Municipal Waste and the like had been pumping out around the same time. Competent, albeit by the numbers kind of stuff. Admittedly, while I found some of their earlier material interesting, and with some notable individual performances from each member, I was never truly enthralled by any of their previous releases. With the injection of new blood, it seems Prika has found some serious songwriting mojo and has delivered some genuinely memorable, catchy metal.

The new members are a spark for the band to be certain. Now a 4-piece band, Nervosa's individual members each put in great performances. New drummer Eleni Nota is the standout here, though. She's an absolute monster behind the kit and brings a ton of energy and technical wizardry to a band that already had a great drummer prior to their break-up. New vocalist Diva Satanica has a much more guttural and death metalized delivery than previous vocalist Fernanda Lira, and this seems to have driven the music on Perpetual Chaos in a similar direction. I hear a lot of traditional death metal sonics on this album, in addition to hefty amounts of teutonic thrash and Motorhead-isms. It's a winning combo.

Perpetual Chaos, as stated previously, has some legitimately memorable tracks. "Venomous," "Until the Very End," and "Under Ruins" are my personal favorites on here, but really the album is pretty damn consistent. Not unlike Slayer in their heyday, this album pretty much never takes it's foot off the gas. The slowest tempos this album delivers are still fairly brisk, and given we are talking about a band heavily influenced by early Sepultura and Kreator, it’s not a shock. There are a few surprises to be found though, such as the almost party-metal, whiskey downing vibe of the Motorhead-ish "Rebel Soul". Featuring a guest vocal performance from Flotsam and Jetsam vocalist Erik Knutson, the whole thing just evokes the image of an out-of-control biker bar. Pretty bad-ass.

The album does suffer a bit from the thrash metal malady of the songs running together a bit. When you are trying to deliver 13 tracks of high intensity thrash metal without a ton of variation, that's gonna happen. This style does have a very identifiable and often rigid sound, which has its positives and negatives. If you are in the mood for 40 straight minutes of moshing and cheap beer, then that is no issue, but it can be hard to distinguish song from song towards the middle of the album. Also, Nervosa are a pretty no-frills band, and as such there's not much soloing or anything of the like to break tracks up into distinguishable segments. Minor issues overall, really.

So, with Perpetual Chaos Nervosa have delivered in spades. It's more interesting and has better performances than anything they've previously put to tape. Something truly commendable after the band was reduced to its sole founding member and needed to be rebuilt from scratch in short order. It's an ass-kicker of an album and with their new-found intensity it appears Nervosa are better off now than they were prior to all the line-up issues. Good stuff.

Track Listing:
1. Venomous
2. Guided by Evil
3. People of the Abyss
4. Perpetual Chaos
5. Until the Very End
6. Genocidal Command
7. Kings of Domination
8. Time to Fight
9. Godless Prisoner
10. Blood Eagle
11. Rebel Soul
12. Pursued by Judgement
13. Under Ruins

Added: March 7th 2021
Reviewer: Brandon Miles
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 1136
Language: english

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