As a genre doomgaze is all about embracing the tension between disparate ideas: the dreamy tranquility of shoegaze with the punishing anguish of doom metal; subdued vocal melodies with high-gain walls of guitar noise; slow tempos paired with ear-splitting volumes.

Even just the title of Nadja’s new album, Luminous Rot, carries the same tension. Strictly speaking, there is nothing luminous about decay. On the surface the process of rot is the leeching of life from an object. But if we look closer, there are microorganisms and insects and fungi that make the process possible. These lifeforms find their sustenance in the rot of dead things. Even in death there is life.

It may not be addressed in the lyrics (which are androgynous and buried in the mix like a fresh corpse), but that theme of life springing from death is present in the sounds of Luminous Rot, a landscape of noise that envelopes the listener like a a womb or a tomb (both metaphors are ubiquitous across shoegaze, doom, and drone, and each descriptor is just as apt here).

It is an incredibly noisy record—the most present sound is a guitar run through a generous amount of fuzz pedals, and little care is taken to prevent the inevitable squeals of feedback brought on by the high level of gain—but there are several moments that one might call beautiful. That noise is often tempered by industrial-inspired drum machines, glistening synths, and soft vocals. The resulting soundscape is equal parts hypnotizing and disorienting, in the same way that My Bloody Valentine, SunnO)))), or the Angelic Process might induce a trance at high volumes (the Angelic Process may be the closest point of reference—this is the only album I’ve heard that feels like Weighing Souls with Sand). This hypnosis is most prominently displayed in the thirteen-minute “Cuts On Your Hands,” which spends much of the song repeating a guitar riff until your ears start picking up on the overtones hanging in the atmosphere above it. Across their sixteen-year career, Nadja has been incredibly prolific. Their Bandcamp page lists literally dozens of releases between albums, EPs, singles, and splits. But this is the first release not mixed by the band themselves. That role was filled by Slint and Tortoise member David Pajo, whose lineage of post-rock and post-punk terraforms the band’s droning ambience in a fresh way. Whether this is your first time listening to Nadja or if you’ve followed them since 2005, Luminous Rot is absolutely worth your time.

Follow Nadja on Instagram. Album cover art by Anoop Bhat.