As your brain tries to get a grip on the multi-perspectives of the MC Escher-like arts, you’re pummelled by the intensity of the vibes on Ni‘s Pantophobie (the fear of everything) LP. I don’t know much about Ni, but I like the souped-up King Crimson metal-headed math rock surprise they are welding here.
Pantophobie is a head-banger’s dream of accented angulars and jigsaw shifts, the bass and drums filling in the churning voids left by the sea-sick tennis match of guitar action. This an exhilarating listen, a ride of complex instrumentals that hit you between the orbits as each phobia-inspired track fosters a bewilderment of directions. The percussive whack-a-mole of “Héliophobie” is lapped up in fret ladders and weaselling licks that maul massive knotty branches into a thing of bruised beauty, replete with yelly saltations and a certain no wave zig-zaggery that lights my head up in runaway pyrotechnics.
The prog-poked platter of “Alecktorophobie”, with its psycho scream-0-delics and resident-like tomfoolery, is pushed into a vertigo of metal / hardcore boomerangs. “Lachanophobie” (can you fear vegetables?) is a slow shimmer, splintering into a dissonant jangerthon of choppy intersections and weird effect-pedal whir that sounds like smashing ambulances.
Ni aren’t afraid to safari into the comical either, and numerous numbers have more than a smidgen of smirk about them. “Catagelophobie”’s Stump-like firewalk coming across like a brambling Primus is a definite torch bearer where that’s concerned, burning up on an over-the-top strangulation of guitar, like a neue Birthday Party (that’s the band, not the special occasion) caught in some (insane) battle of the bands face-off. Honestly, Pantophobie is a magnificent beast that screams new blood into your desire for fiery riffery.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
