Tony Castrato and Jonathan Jasperse of Boston’s Nursing are no strangers to bold experimentation. Both members of Needle Play, a mathcore group with serious jazz tendencies, the two have already been working together for the past 3 years creating some of the most boundary pushing and technically proficient material in underground music.
Chaotic. Dark. Dissonant. Evil. These words are often are hollow and hyperbolic when used in reference to extreme music, but Self Care is just that and more. A departure from the sardonicism and blitheness of Needle Play, Nursing‘s debut full-length album, which was mixed and mastered by Chris Dearing of The Sound That Ends Creation, is a wild fusion of blackened mathcore and nostalgia inducing 80’s synth soundscapes, a truly unique listening experience that is something akin to hearing Psyopus thrown into the middle of the 70’s B-movie sci-fi classic, Planet of the Dinosaurs, but instead of lasers, it’s fucking whammy pedals, dog.
“Dining Room Chandelier,” the album’s opening salvo, is a succinct mission statement for the duo’s newly formed effort. Haunting synthesizers build the dread for what will be the first of many sub-bass drops and ear piercing and gratuitous use of the Digitech Whammy.
While many of the songs are purely aural assaults, Nursing took care to deliver good pacing on Self Care. Moments like the brief interlude “Charcuterie Plate” are a lulling, disarming, and quite nearly relaxing, delivering a brief moment of respite before launching into “Silk Sheets.”
One of the more dynamic cuts on the LP, “Silk Sheets” features a creeping and arrhythmic middle section fueled by trembling guitars that are punctuated by more of the album’s many sub bass drops and closed out by an uncharacteristically conventional clean outro.
Nursing also take some serious risks on their debut LP, branching out fully and unabashedly into dark synth wave territory that recalls the likes of later Daughters, as seen here on “Seven Fold Tie.”
One of the striking features of this album is the song titles, each one of them referencing items of luxury and wealth, signaling that they are all truly meaningless. Nursing are here to remind you that we all share the same fears.
“Self Care” drops March 19th via Dark Trail Records
Mathcore Index 