I'd be a complete liar if I didn't admit that I had never heard of Nervosa before picking up Perpetual Chaos. This is hardly surprising and hardly the band's fault. Metal can still be a boys club, even while it claims to be an all-encompassing club for misfits of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, genders, and creeds. This means that it will always be the boys who take the leading roles while everyone else is relegated to the supporting cast. As an all-woman thrash band though, Nervosa was able to cut through the waves of beards, bullocks, and buttheads for over ten years, to great acclaim by pretty much everyone except for me (hey, I'll admit when I come up short). They held it together as long as they could... and then they couldn't. Due to a variety of circumstances, in 2020, original member and guitarist Prika Amaral found herself as the only remaining member of the once fearsome phalanx of feminine ferocity. When you're a three-member band, and two members quit, that's usually the end of the line. Either the band is done, or it continues as the conspicuous solo project of the one remaining member. Neither was to be the case for Nervosa.
Not only did Nervosa persist as a full band, but it also dodged the easy trap of becoming a one-woman show under the eye-brow raiser banner of a royal "we." Through savvy recruiting efforts on Prika's part, she was able to reconstruct this ball-busting Bride of Frankenstein, and shock her monster back from the brink of oblivion, with the help of ex-Abbath bassist Mia Wallace, progressive metal drummer Eleni Nota of Lightfold, and Bloodhunter vocalist Diva Satanica. According to Prika, she deliberately recruited the band's new members from outside Brazil, with the new members coming from Greece, Italy, and Spain, respectively. The band's new international status made recording their fourth LP Perpetual Chaos, a logistical nightmare (especially during a global pandemic), but the results speak for themselves. Perpetual Chaos rules!
The album opens with the vicious ripper "Venomous," followed closely by the Sodom raising "Guided By Evil," and the riff and drum fill avalanche "People of the Abyss." A three-punch volley that will prime you for the knock-out blow of the title track, "Perpetual Chaos," which springs forth from the rubble of man's folly, like a scythe-wielding wraith, fueled by vengeance, come to cull the corrupt and callous architects of the vanel temples of villainy that direct the devices that arrange our arrogant social orders. Capitalists, politicians, whathaveyou- the heads of our oppressors are about to roll, like ripe melons plopping off fruit cart with a wobbly wheel as it bumps and bucks down a cobblestone street (metaphorically, of course, this is art after all, they can say whatever you want!).
The problems that power, domination and inequality present to self-described "free societies," are explored on the album with the urgency they deserve. Global agribusiness and the genocidal slaughter of domesticated and wild animals alike, is reproached with bloody rage on the excessive, Exodus-esque scourge "Kings of Domination." The repugnant response of national governments in the public health crisis caused by the in Carona virus pandemic is address with an appropriate level of rage on "Time to Fight." And the need to seize one's own freedom and work for other's liberation, as well as your own, is dramatically illustrated on the ruckus revolt primer "Rebel Soul," wherein guest vocalist Eric A.K. of Flotsam and Jetsam all but declares that, "There is no authority but yourself" (he does refer to himself as an anarchist though, which is pretty close).
While Nervosa is a serious band with messages pertinent to our time, they make room on Perpetual Chaos for some good old-fashioned, bloody fun as well. Particularly on the impressively revolting "Blood Eagle" which spills a full-bucket of acid fermented Destruction disgorging riffs over your head. Then there is also the fatal flair of the alienation greeting, void embracing "Until the Very End," where the grooves kick like a mule and the rhythm whirls like the blades of a jet turbine that has just caught the sleeve of your jacket.
Some commentators I've read have bemoaned the direction that Nervosa has taken on Perpetual Chaos, transforming themselves into a bombastic Kreator-styled death-thrash group, and letting slip from their repertoire some of the black metal elements that had previously found a home in their sound. As I said in the beginning, I'm not familiar with the band's past work, but Perpetual Chaos delivered most of everything I want from an extreme metal album, and on that basis alone, it earns a hearty recommendation.
Buy Perpetual Chaos from Naplam Records here.
