There was a buzz on the streets around Warsaw in Greenpoint on Friday night. The sun was setting on a day of blue skies and balmy weather. Blossoms had appeared in the nearby McCarren Park, lending it a warm pinkish aspect. The air was filled with the summer-redolent smells of rotting trash and dogshit. It was hard not to feel optimistic.
Nothing, the shoegaze band from Philadelphia, PA, did not appear to share in this optimism – intent, rather, on cultivating a living nightmare. Anyone hoping for a good night’s sleep came to the wrong show.
Nothing were headlining a powerful night ranging from shoegaze to metal-gabber to noise rock. First up were VMO (Violent Magic Orchestra), who described themselves to Dazed in 2024 as an “overwhelming experience.” The audience, no matter how whelmed, had better right themselves though, because next up were the wonderfully-named Cryogeyser, a three-piece from LA who lean heavy on low-end dissonance to back up their emotionally charged lyrics.
The final support act was Full Body 2, later described by the headliners as their “friendly neighbors” from Philly. I’ll have to take their word for it because there is nothing friendly about this music, all power chord dissonance and crash cymbal.
I overheard someone between sets explaining that Nothing are the loudest band they have heard, which sets my ears to a Pavlovian ringing. While it was difficult to really discern much of the melody from Full Body 2, I was at least grateful for the ear-drum exposure therapy. The crowd were loving things; it took barely two songs for a pit to open up and I watched as someone was given, from a man suiting up at probably 6-5 and 290, an unexpected but presumably valuable lesson in the conservation of momentum.
Then the room went dark and the nightmare really began. Before Nothing came onstage, they played a recording, the first of many vocal clips dotted between songs, of a woman chanting the mantra “I was living in a deviltown, I didn’t realize it was a deviltown.” This was set to grainy documentary footage of what seemed to be from riots at a British prison.
Nothing’s latest album, a short history of decay, is nine tracks of melancholy power chords and glitchy digital effects. Nicky Palermo, vocalist and band leader, sings of feelings of isolation and loss, of nostalgic dismay, of apocalyptic war scenes. But while there is nothing in these lyrics to suggest that Palermo has cheered up of late, it is clear that, musically, Nothing have departed from previous albums.
When No Birds Sang, the band’s previous album, is significantly heavier, and I had come into the show thinking that Nothing had softened. It sounded like they’d accidentally caught a Stereolab set at a festival, or someone had left a Snow Patrol CD at theirs at an afters, and had decided to mellow out a bit.
Then the music started, and it was clear that I was mistaken. Music is probably not even the appropriate word, insofar as it implies something you hear. What emanated from the stage was only partially this; it was something you felt before you heard, felt in your chest and your eyeballs and kneecaps, a full-spectrum shockwave of power chords and kick drums. The effect is quite remarkable, especially when you shut your eyes and let yourself notice just how melodic and beautiful those power chords are.
The band essentially ran through the new album. It took just a song or two before Palermo launched himself into the crowd, only visible now by his guitar’s headstock poking out of the crowd, his roadie letting out line like a patient fisherman.
Part of what makes this a compelling spectacle, what makes it a nightmare really, is the sensation that the assault is coming on all fronts. The giant LED screen behind the band is now showing clips from a movie complete with gasp-inducing scenes of oral sex.
Halfway through the set Nothing played “cannibal world,” the standout track from the album with its jungle drumbeat and shrill guitar arrangements. It was probably the musical highlight of the performance, with the drummer Zachary Jones imitating the glitchy drum-machine adroitly.
But it can be hard to really tune in because there’s so much else going on. The screen is now showing what appears to be infrared footage from drones as they ghost around bare Ukrainian forest, cutting to static as they detonate on fleeing Russian bodies.
“I did not expect to see death today,” says the man behind me, a sentiment that seems shared with many in the crowd. I take solace, given recent events, in the knowledge that these machines are being piloted by real humans and not autonomous computers, and that they are targeting adult soldiers and not Iranian schoolgirls. But it is hard not to feel like Nothing are trying to sicken us, punish us.
I am grateful when this transitions to clips from The Color of Pomegranates, an avant-garde poem-movie made in the Soviet Union in 1969. While these clips are visually gorgeous, featuring an array of the most beautiful people you’ve ever seen, the movie feels – in this context and with its bizarre, uncanny compositions – like no less of a nightmare.
The effect of all of this is to stun the audience. Despite the energy of those crashing about throughout the show, the response is somewhat muted between songs, and at the end of regulation you could hear a pin drop. It takes much cajoling from a hardy few to get an encore.
Afterwards, the Brooklyn air is cooler, frazzled-seeming, and I feel as though Nothing have got their way, that there is none of the optimism of before. But maybe it’s just the ringing in my ears.
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