Finland’s NYOS have always been a different kind of animal no matter what vantage point you see them from. If you say they’re post-rock, others will say it’s too fast or too feral. If you say they’re prog, others will say they’re too hypnotic. If you say they’re math rock… actually math rock works. For the most part. But they’re also part of something much bigger.
There’s no shortage of examples when it comes to the fabled magnetic fields generated by a locked in two-piece. They’re always getting referenced in math rock, like Battles, El Ten Eleven, Hella, and Lightning Bolt are just the easy ones. NYOS, like Aiming for Enrike and Planets, are sort of the next generation of these aggressively talented two-pieces, with each of them honing in on different aspects of the dualities that came before them.
With Growl, NYOS yet again sound like the strange, mystical animal that wandered into your party just as it was dying down. It’s entrancing, and maybe even menacing – but you let it in, and that’s when the life of the party really begins.
Without spoiling things completely, it’s pretty apparent that NYOS finally felt comfortable with the instrumental language they’d established up to this point and let listeners hear a full on conversation between the two members. Growl is confounding, beautiful, and as alive sounding as ever. At times the band even tries to restrain it, but most of the time they have a free-wheeling, outside-of-time jazz feel thanks to constant juxtaposition in the drums and guitars. “Lo4” actually does feel like something new for the band, with a way more electronic edge, but it’s still very much in order with the pace of Growl altogether. It’s not inorganic sounding, more like a new toy, and they don’t overuse it either, with closer “Alright Goodnight” imparting ecstatic math rock in a way you can’t help but be completely taken by.
It makes sense that they often tour with massive sounding bands like Oransi Pazuzu and Zeal and Ardor, but it always has. They’ve always been able to get crushingly loud. But in honing the dynamics leading up to those levels, the payoff is huge. Growl is stranger and more cohesive as a statement, and we can see NYOS playing a whole other strain of heavy, experimental bands now that they’ve opened up. It’s a mature, self-aware LP. At least, that’s how it feels, it’s ultimately as musically encoded as anything they’ve done as well. We just feel more in on what the band is doing as opposed to trying to play catch up to them – we might not know the language, but we can feel the weight of whatever it is they’re saying.
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