Features

By Caleb Newton | 1.18.2019

California’s Nuvolascura present a demanding listening experience on their masterful self-titled full-length screamo debut. “Saccharine Trance”—presented below—represents a snapshot of the band’s capability, circulating around an almost surprisingly pretty riff before repeatedly devolving into finely tuned, exhilarating utter chaos.

The record overall definitely leans that direction, feeling like a desperately urgent effort to transcribe inspirations, moods, and experiences as they come. Still, the album packs a definite progression as it gets only noisier and noisier by the end. Considering the wild note with which it establishes itself, that feeling says a lot about where the record leaves the listener by its conclusion.

Ultimately, the band pack a remarkable amount of emotional and sonic space into their dynamic release that only clocks in at just under twenty minutes, although they never go too far into straightforward emo. Still — chaos and all — their debut feels like the farthest thing from just white noise, emerging both like a pain sparked spiral and an effort to situate that descent into defeat in a broader context.

That context includes an impressive screamo pedigree. The screamo connoisseur Zegema Beach Records is releasing a limited vinyl run of the record internationally, besides hosting the band at their second Zegema Beach Records Fest this late May and early June in Vancouver, Canada, that you should be on the lookout for if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, California, or surrounding areas — or want to make a trek.

That doesn’t even cover the band members themselves, who’ve been in outfits including SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Letters to Catalonia, Curtains, Heritage Unit, and Ghost Spirit, all of whom have impressive releases along the true screamo spectrum available for the world right now. There’s more where that came from too, with new full-lengths from bands like Ghost Spirit apparently on the horizon.

Nuvolascura themselves used to go by Vril, and they released a few collections of music under that name going back to 2015. Besides Zegema Beach Records, they’re also associated with Sombras Del Progreso and No Funeral — the latter of which is doing a small run of Nuvolascura on tape, if that’s your jam.

The full record should be available to stream Jan. 22. Pick up the vinyl from Zegema Beach here if you’re in the US and here if you’re anywhere else. Tapes are here, and you can keep in touch with the band on Facebook.

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