A Bizarre & Often Genuinely Disturbing Record
Any pretences that 'Ark' would be an easy album to listen to are dispelled within the first thirty seconds of the first song, 'Twilight of the Idols'. This EP demands your full attention and anything is just not good enough. Dark and intricate throughout, Nine Days to No One weave a path through heavy oppression, sheer craziness, and bleak melancholy creating soundscapes that are convincing for a while but repeated listening takes the shine off.
It would be fair to say that the whole EP is based around the Biblical floods in some capacity, which is an interesting topic of choice in itself. That it's done in a style often described as 'devil's music' is even more intriguing. 'Twilight of the Idols' is a noisy, disjointed chaos of atonal guitars and desperate, screamed vocals. What really gives it that extra edge is the striking melody that runs through most of the song, like a church bell cutting through riotous noise. On the other hand, 'Jadoo' prefers to pummel you as much as unnerve you. The combination of stop start drumming and aggressive guitars isn't for anyone with a nervous disposition but all that violence is tempered with great melodic vocals.
The further in you get, the more you realise that Nine Days to No One have experimented more than you'd realise. Tracks four and five are so different from the rest of the record it's startling and the variation is welcome. 'Tacit' is a straight instrumental that twists and turns with bleak melancholic beauty. There are some resemblances to 'Nothing Else Matters'-era Metallica, but this is a good thing. 'So My Inferior, This Ends' is a sucker punch of a punk rock song that's probably one of the best on the EP. It's fast, furious, and direct.
These guys certainly know to do bleak but heavy oppressiveness though, with 'And Then Came the Floods' an aural description of what God smiting sinners might sound. The tune veers between being devoid of any hope and pinning you against a wall with sheer brutality. At over six minutes long, after a while it's just too long and, where the first two songs had something to give them an edge, this hasn't.
If you're looking for something different, something that'll challenge you, then this is the record for you. 'Ark' is complicated and encompasses so many different genres that it's worth at least giving it a couple of spins.