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. The in-your-face persona of this album pours with inventiveness, the fury of which leaves you a bit breathless; but a few smoochy cinematic intros give a much needed space before you are thrown into the wall again in a parallax of pounding plesiosaur. But my favourite has got to be “Leucosélophobie”, the scenic awash with psychedelic caverns before launching into some awesome rhythmic heaviness. An incredible energy that spreads out before you in sparking riffology and clashing bin lids, bursting in accenting accelerants.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-
