MV Recommends: Nervus

There’s a point in Everything Dies, the second album from Walford, UK’s Nervus, where Em Foster thinks her life might start at 29. It’s on lead single “Sick Sad World,” a tangled mess of guitar leads and a narrator who’s unreliable only because she has a “melted brain.” It’s a delicate and hopeful thought, but it gets doled out over hot coals of anthemic, swerving pop-punk and a backbone that shrouds itself in unforgiving black. It’s in this vulnerable niche — the sliver of overlap in a Venn diagram displaying confession and chutzpah — where Nervus gains its magnetism. Many of the tracks here, like the piano-led “Skin” or the thorns scarring “Recycled Air,” bite the same way Alkaline Trio does. The darkness tied to such a comparison might brand this overseas group as bleak and snarling. However, Foster’s storytelling soundtracks her experience as a trans woman as a definite victory, rather than something to bury beneath noise.

Don’t believe me? The full LP drops via Big Scary Monsters today.

Everything Dies will be released today via Big Scary Monsters. The LP will be available on black or pink vinyl.