What Bob Vylan are doing for punk music – updating, politicising, merging with grime and electronica – London’s Nova Twins have simultaneously been doing for future-rock.
Around their 2020 debut album Who Are The Girls? the duo’s hyper-charged clash of modernist metal, rap, industrial rock and snaking R&B drew comparisons to Enter Shikari and The Prodigy, and this second album brings the heft and enormity to make them serious contenders.
Forthright of attitude on the BLM-inspired Cleopatra, the riot-for-recognition Antagonist and Fire & Ice (‘I wanna strut, I wanna scream, I wanna fuck, I wanna fight, I wanna bite’, bawls Amy Love), they now have the sonic goods to match, with unique twists.
A Dark Place For Somewhere Beautiful echoes the atmospheric savagery of Wolf Alice, R&B metal shagging tune Puzzles comes on like Missy Elliot with a mohawk, and Sleep Paralysis considers the dark state of the world (‘Is this reality, living in a bad dream?’) to a nightmare-carnival backing.
