Nils Erga is absent and gone with him is his viola. In his place is Anders Hana, member of Ultralyd and Moha!, and some tight underwear presumably hugging a woman's ass. Hana has some big shoes to fill with Erga gone, but manages to make great use of his guitar, summoning electric freak outs to accompany the band's mucky delivery.
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The name Anders Hana scares me: I didn't like his solo release on Utech (it bored me to tears) and Moha! isn't a band to write home about. Each release demonstrated Hana's love for the guitar, but didn't showcase a single ounce of song writing talent. Noxagt, on the other hand, are precise and powerful. For all their energy and manic presentation, their music is beautifully arranged and written. It would seem, then, that Hana has found himself a home. Paired with the heart-attack-inducing, rhythmic convulsions of Kjetil D. Brandsdal and Jan Christian Lauritzen, Hana's guitar finally sounds fantastic. His love for the instrument brings the whole album home.
Brandsdal and Lauritzen still like to sound as though they're trying to fight themselves out of a paper sack with a chain-saw, but their sloppy, muggy chops are now highlighted by a guitar. At first the difference isn't readily apparent. Erga's viola work was magnificent, making the instrument sound natural in a setting it wouldn't normally be placed in. Replacing that sound with a guitar has its advantages, though, one of them being Hana's ability to let the instrument lead him as much as he leads it. Feedback, the light hum of strings being teased, and the shriek of an abused fret board figure heavily on this album, making it a rougher and more sizzling album than anything else in the band's discography.
The differences are not enormous, even if they become more obvious later. This album chugs more than their other records, it has more open space rather than more chaotic arrangements. Everything is much slower and more focused on timbre this time around. Noxagt remains the same in the most essential ways, Hana has simply entered to modify their presentation. Noxagt fans might be disappointed by the lack of viola power on this record, but Hana has finally proven he's a competent musician and band member. In the end, this is a tweak in the band's work that I suspect will birth more and different fruit in the future.
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