Nothing [US] + Support: Hammok [NO]

Nothing from Philadelphia brings shoegaze rock to Stengade on August 26, blending noise passages, alt rock, post-punk, dreampop, and noise rock. The loud Norwegian hardcore power trio Hammok opens the evening.

Nothing have always been rule-breakers. Shoegaze renegades who've rebuilt the stereotypically lightweight genre in their own bloodied American image. Outlaw poets spilling existential dread on mile-wide canvasses of fuzz and reverb. Beginning as a Philly-born bedroom solo project in 2010, Nothing's music has always captured the full scale of the human condition, both the blaring anger and the whispering sadness.

A Short History of Decay, Nothing's fifth solo album and first for Run For Cover Records, widens that aperture even further, providing the most hi-def rendering of Nothing to date. The band have never sounded this colossal, never felt this intimate, never been this honest. With the strongest arsenal in Nothing's ever-shifting lineup locked in - guitarist Doyle Martin (Cloakroom), bassist Bobb Bruno (Best Coast), drummer Zachary Jones (MSC, Manslaughter 777), and third guitarist Cam Smith (Ladder To God, also of Cloakroom) - singer-songwriter Domenic "Nicky" Palermo knew he had the manpower to make the band's most ambitious record yet.

Co-written and produced with Whirr guitarist Nicholas Bassett, and with additional production and mixing work from Sonny Diperri (DIIV, Julie), A Short History of Decay is the most evolved musical statement in Nothing's catalog. Songs like "Cannibal World" and "Toothless Coal" are cataclysmic lashings of mechanized industrial-gaze that sound like My Bloody Valentine - except more extreme. On the other end of the spectrum, the ornately morose "Purple Strings" boasts a beautiful string arrangement that includes harpist and two-time Nothing contributor Mary Lattimore.