It's rather odd talking of a band barely 10 years old and classifying it all into early era, mid era etc; but Nadja's prolific nature allows it. Those awkward, gangly beginnings, those halcyon days of 05-08 where a remarkably large amount of remarkably amazing music was produced, the gradual turn into poor splits and often awful collaborations thereafter, culminating in the brutal 2010- 2011 era wherein basically everything they did was flogged-to-death-Nadja-by-numbers at best, and just flat out awful, directionless shite at worst. I'm not entirely sure if this release heralds a new beginning as the excellent Primitive World collaboration- big riffs and all that- was already a new dawn over a landscape that had long been thought forever frozen. Perhaps "Dagdrom" is the first sign of life as the icesheets melt and rivers chew through the once dead landscape.
It's a fresh record, a vibrant record, and while it perhaps lacks the hallucinating, gobsmacked beauty of those golden days it's still a very nice bit of doom metal via post-punk/noise rock, and let's repeat that word ROCK again because this is quite a rhythmic, heavy beast. I love it when Aidan and Leah drone away, but I prefer it a lot more when he summons the fuzz into something more malevolent and active. Prime example being "Space Time & Absence", where a cracking tribal beat quickly turns into a super propulsive, riff heavy beast of a track; I assume there's some sort of early 90's deal going on here with the surprising catchy chorus but it's hard to tell as it's been buried under a million distortion pedals. It's great and the breakdown afterwards sounds astonishingly good- building up this crazy amount of tension.. only for the song to end. Huh. I'll assume it was a deliberate move, in which case I am happy to give Nadja a roguish wink and be all "well played, you devious bastards".
But yeah, big riffs, live drums (fucken YES) and very catchy songwriting. Dagdrom's a rather hard album to classify; there'll be a few straight out forward doom riffs (One Sense Alone, what a huge, crushing ending!) and then a chorus will come along that sounds a lot like, I dunno, Sonic Youth or something (readers must excuse my general ignorance about most experimental/noisy rock), and is as un-metal as it can get. Doom metal wrapped up in an experimental rock package, or the other way round? It's hard to tell.
It's easy to tell that it sounds really freakin good though. The live drums are bashed with abandon and the guitar tones are the most organic Baker's ever had. Long songs, but well written and enjoyable whether they're doing a particularly long build or hammering away at a few huge riffs. I think I would've preferred a bit more of a hypnodrone workout from time to time throughout but that's nitpicking really, it's a wonderful sounding package and everything in it's been made with such a palpable sense of passion that it's hard to deny. Welcome back bros, it's been too long.