Review: National Sunday Law - “La Storia di Cannibali” (2009)
With “La Storia di Cannibali,” National Sunday Law thrusts themselves into an increasingly crowded subgenre of extreme music, making themselves targets for inevitable comparisons to Mastodon, Baroness, Neurosis and the like. And while NSL sounds superficially like those bands, their debut shows that they’ve managed to fashion a unique sound that is all their own.
Having created an album worthy of comparison to the genre’s heavyweights is an achievement by itself, but what’s more impressive is that National Sunday Law do it with only two guys - basically a guitarist, a drummer and some keyboards, along with various guitar effects and loops to fill out the sound. You certainly wouldn’t know it from listening to the album, as “La Storia di Cannibali” can get very layered and monstrously heavy in places.
But for all the heavy, churning metal the album contains, there’s an equal amount of moodier guitar sections and softer keyboard and synth passages, and it’s this contrast of heavy-hitting sludge and softer ambient sections which defines National Sunday Law’s sound. The soft / loud songwriting is not new in the genre of course, but these guys place more emphasis on the softer side of their songs than most bands do, and the result is a nice blend of mellow rock and more aggressive metallic riffing.
Although “La Storia di Cannibali” does remind me of bands like Mouth of the Architect, Pelican or Intronaut in various places (and Intronaut frontman Sacha Dunable even contributes guest vocals on the last track), it’s Germany’s Woburn House that I think National Sunday Law most closely resembles. Both seem equally at home writing brutal riffs and spacier ambient passages, and both bands use vocals only sparingly, with many of the songs being largely instrumental. And while National Sunday Law often employs the typical screamed vocals, I find myself appreciating the Woburn House-esque clean vocal sections more because of the contrast it provides. National Sunday Law definitely have more of a hardcore / mathcore influence in their music though, resembling Botch on songs like ‘Strong and Mighty like an Oak.’
So National Sunday Law are pretty much already winners just by not sounding like a carbon copy of any existing sludge bands. The fact that they are talented enough songwriters to blend as many elements into their music as they do without making the listener go “WTF” is a nice bonus. As evidenced by their debut, these guys have a very bright future ahead of them. Needless to say this is a band worth checking out.
