Big|Brave
nature morte
THRILL JOCKEY
A hilarious debate crops up in a little pocket of the internet every time Montreal’s Big|Brave releases a new album: Are they a metal band? The crux of the conversation often involves the organizers of Encyclopaedia Metallum—the All Music Guide for metal artists—refusing to include the heavy-rock trio on their website (the other metal encyclopedia of note, Spirit of Metal, does include the band). Some fans cry foul, going so far as to call Metallum’s decision a form of “blacklisting.”
The debate is amusing because, aside from the fact that every metal band would love to be blacklisted in some form of another, it’s redundant, antiquated, and irrelevant. Big|Brave and an army of other experimental metal bands—The Body (with whom Big|Brave released a psychedelic folk LP last year), Divide and Dissolve, Wreck and Reference—have already won the war between metal purists and hipster interlopers. Look at any heavy-metal festival lineup these days and you’ll see a mixture of traditional metal bands and (usually newer) acts pushing the genre to its limits by eschewing head-banging melodies, guitar-solo histrionics, and chorus-verse-chorus song structures.
What Big|Brave and like-minded bands are doing is not unlike how distortion-obsessed no wave projects (RIP Tom Verlaine) took over CBGB in New York as a cheeky response to the slick, corporate-friendly new wave groups of the time. Except here the result is different: Because traditional heavy metal bands turned into such parodies of themselves, fans of Very Loud Music eventually shrugged and put their collective arm over the shoulder of indie metal enthusiasts. And, just like a political movement that successfully subsumes its sects, the proportion of music lovers who say they like metal appears larger than ever.
With their fifth album nature morte, Big|Brave continue to challenge these metal norms—particularly with the first track, a structureless wall of sound called “carvers, farriers and knaves.” But on the remaining five songs, Big|Brave take on an even tougher task: challenging themselves. Veering away from what they’re most known for—bludgeon the listener with slow slab after slow slab—Big|Brave frequently turn down the distortion knobs, and their overall volume, pretty damn low.
That’s to the great benefit of vocalist/guitarist Robin Wattie, whose singing emerges into the foreground as the guitars (including her own) recede into softly adventuresome soundscapes. It’s a shame Big|Brave have kept Wattie’s sonorous singing a secret for so long (did they not do their Jarboe and Neurosis homework?). Nevertheless, in making a critical adjustment and showing off Wattie’s superpowers, Big|Brave prove with nature morte that the band packs more than just a pounding.
