Following their self-titled 7” from 2021, II features seven new tunes from Montréal’s TOTAL NADA. With lyrics in Spanish, the bands’ taut hardcore approach is cast in looming post-punky shadows that lend an heir of dread to the spirited music. It’s fiery, battle-cry-laden punk slathered in dark moods that range from jaded dissatisfaction to full-on impending doom. Powerful and pouty, this would make a perfect soundtrack to being trounced by a gothic MMA fighter.
Somewhere I read that to repress libidinal energy is to repress the genius of creativity. TOTAL NADA, with this debut EP, seeks to do precisely the opposite. They build, with just six awesome tracks, a space of liberation for those libidinal energies to emerge and birth autonomy and personal expression. The band is from Canada, with a Colombian vocalist singing in Spanish, and a sound where the different axes of the global hardcore cartography converge. One senses the brutalist monotone of RUDIMENTARY PENI but also the manic aggression of South American hardcore of the late ’80s and early ’90s and the overwhelming force of the best Italian punk. It’s gorgeous, it’s fun, it’s sweaty, and above all, it’s brilliant. It is the light that guides us out of the ideological labyrinth in which we live.
