Great Dismal

With The Great Dismal they’ve exceeded expectations.

Under Yip's guidance, The Great Dismal trades subtlety for distilled power. When it's quiet, a guitar blast is usually only seconds away. There are a few abrupt edits that are the work of Pro-Tools or some such software. But maybe these are small prices to pay for an album that plays to Palermo's strengths in such a satisfying fashion.

Haunting, visceral, and often beautiful 'The Great Dismal' is a record well worth checking out.

On a record that outwardly calls for the end of us, there’s plenty to live for, even if it’s simply the subtle beauty of Nothing.

This time Nothing are in full command of their sound and technique. By adding back the metal and amping up the melodies, the result is an assured and powerful album that delivers on the promise of the group's debut without copying it. Their growth as a band has been faltering at times, but now that they've arrived, it's good to see and wonderful to hear.

It has everything one could want from a shoegaze album in 2020, without sounding like their last album that much.

The Great Dismal, thankfully, is everything it promised to be – it sounds huge, and it sounds miserable.

Despite all the gloom, this is a deeply enjoyable album. [Jan 2021, p.87]

Deprived of fuzzy riffs, Domenic Palermo’s voice floats naked in a woolly, gentle sound, simultaneously confessing and recollecting. But from there on, they shift into higher gear, injecting doses of anxiety into colourful progressive dream pop and shoegaze bites. [Dec 2020, p.62]

Nothing has established their voice by transforming that anxiety into languid, slanted harmonies. The Great Dismal takes stock of their career, finding vaporous beauty in shrugging off their inner demons.

NOTHING, a band noted for their none-more-dour demeanour using a black hole as inspiration might be a little too on-the-nose for some tastes. At a time when hope feels in scant supply, wade into the blackness of these waters at your own discretion.