ALBUM REVIEW: Nadja – Luminous Rot

Southern Lord

Released: 21.05.21

While their impressive, extensive catalogue as Nadja contains plenty of left-turns, exploratory moments and oddball experiments, Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff’s ability to find new scope within their distinctive amalgamation of shoegaze, doom and dense electronics remains undimmed on the evidence of Luminous Rot.

Here, they tilt their ultra-distorted sound towards mutated variants of cold wave, goth and early industrial (such as the chugging Ministry-isms of the title track or the way Fruiting Bodies offers a death-crawl take on The Sisters of Mercy), a cold melodicism holding the material back from spectral drift and towards something more earthly and concrete. If not a representative starting point for new listeners, Luminous Rot is a thorny delight for those already under Nadja’s dark magic.