Nuclear Holocaust – Sailing The Seas Of Nuclear Waste Review

Questions, dear reader: Do you like bells? Whistles? Flash or flair or flamboyance? Musical accouterments? Sonic trappings? Any kind of adornments?

If you answered yes to any of the excessive variations upon the same question above, then Poland’s Nuclear Holocaust may not be for you.

And that’s because Nuclear Holocaust trades primarily in two things: Simplicity, and crusty punky thrashy bashing. Like the spate of Nuclear splits and handful of Holocausts before it, Sailing The Seas Of Nuclear Waste is primarily grindcore, built heavily upon a base of crossover and crust punk, and it’s defined by its dedication to a seemingly hard-set ideal of no wasted effort. There are no notes where any note doesn’t absolutely need to be to get the point across; there are no solos, and not even a guitar fill to be heard. Doomtrigger’s bass is a low rumble, one that detaches itself from the whole so infrequently that the moments when its gnarly clanking crossover tone truly does poke out are like Bigfoot sightings, rare and a bit of a blur but yet an interesting new development.

With no wasted notes, XXX-Bomber’s riffs are about as straightforward as they can be without being too simplistic or flat-out boring; a few moments lean on tremolo picking, like the hefty intro to “Bloody Kiss” or the slicing riffs of “The One Above The Mankind,” and some inject a welcome sense of diminished-chord skronk (“Undead Hordes Special Forces”), but the vast majority of these riffs fall into a chord-based hardcore style. The arrangements cycle between one or two such riffs for sixty seconds or so, and then the songs crash to a close. Tempos are quick and quicker, not a wide swing, and there are hardly even drum fills, only what’s necessary to delineate the changes, with no extraneous clutter in Overkiller’s hammering blast- or skank or d-beats. Bloodseeker’s vocals stick to a midrange snarl, with some minor tonal changes (see “Scrap Blade Of Destiny,” where he alternates between a throatier growl and … and even throatier growl, and even a doubled scream to close), but here, as everywhere, there are no real dynamic or stylistic variations to speak of. Throughout all of Sailing The Seas Of Nuclear Waste, there are no sound bites or film samples, no gang shouts, no electronic interludes, no noise excursions, none of the side-steps or additions many other grind bands use to embellish their destruction.

With little deviation in the approach between tracks, only the finest of hairs separates any one of Sailing The Seas’ sixteen songs from the next – a riff here, or a turn there, mostly in the examples above, with the churning “The One Above The Mankind” a mid-album highlight where all the parts fall into play, carving riff and driving blast and even a swaggering midsection. “Suicidal Paranoia” follows that one, both literally and musically, with a chugging determined swing and some higher-register chord work that sticks out as much for being in a different area of the fretboard as for any actual hook quality, and then it’s all over before you know it. The short and cyclical main riff of “Decay Deep Inside” jumps out immediately, buoyed by the blasts beneath. Closing number “Your Demise = Our Rise” almost has a guitar melody in its main riff, balanced against a bouncy second section (and an audible bass chunk in later moments), and it’s one of Sailing The Seas’ most memorable tracks, if also its parting shot.

Boiled down to the barebones of thrash-punk grinding, Sailing The Seas Of Nuclear Waste certainly takes its less-is-enough aesthetic seriously, but that’s not to say that amongst its crashing and bashing, it’s entirely a smashing success. Nuclear Holocaust’s monomaniacal focus on the most pared-down punk metal does tend to render Sailing The Seas a bit… monotonous. Or at the very least, monochromatic. With only the rudiments in place, it’s certainly easy to toss the common grind critique of “it’s all one long song” at Nuclear Holocaust’s sound. Still, there’s some merit to their madness, even if the sheer simplicity that defines it also renders it likely of high interest to only the more die-hard legions of crusties and grinders.

Nevertheless, if you’re in the mood for a punked-out piss-up, these snotty and snot-green-logoed goofballs got you covered for twenty-five minutes, at least, though you may not remember all of them individually later.