Norfair
Photo Cred 📸: @samrottschafer
When capturing a sense of immense dread, many bands go the slow route. Somber, plinky discordance is the favorite of others. Norfair however, have instead opted for a disheartening wall of sound. Their debut self-titled EP, is an enveloping mire of harsh sounds and soft quiet sadness.
“Asan Song” immediately encroaches on your senses with shrill throat shredding vocals and cacophonous wall of sound guitars trading bleary eyed blows with black metal percussive, as a guttural bassline stirs like a forgotten evil beneath the murky surface of instrumentation. Think wasthisthefacethatlaunchedtenthousandships? meets Flowers Taped to Pens. Second track “Rowan Warber Was Killed by Big Pharma” matches the intensity while adding an almost sludgy segment of hellish vocals and last-breath-gurgle guitars, with a poignantly dark audio clip to cap it off pulled from the borderline horror film Gummo. The quiet beginning to third track “Lying in a Stream of Dead Light” lulled me into a false sense of security, and reminded me of something The Khayembii Communique would’ve plugged as an intro to a song. Closer “Wooshah!” revels in its juxtaposition against its track title and is anything but calming.
The aching soft chords follow a whirling guitar storm before sweeping into a swelling bass riff as abysmally anguished vocals cough out a collective Wooshah! before vaulting into epic building storm of instrumentation towering higher and higher with the clear intent to leap off and plummet to the earth as we watch, unable to look away. When we try to push through the things that make our lives harder, we often find that there is no real road around them. Instead we find an impermeable bog of anguish and ichor and that is terrifying. Norfair seems to know this all too well.
They’ve made abject despair, the center mark on their self-titled ep, and amidst the whirling dervish of heavy fucking music theres a clear cry that seems to shout out “oh the humanity”. Delectably heavy, digestibly short, we look forward to more from them in the coming years.
Checkout their Bandcamp here: Honey Suckle Records
Writer : @letsgetpivotal
Editor : @just_reidz
01/22/23
