Recently, I feel like I’ve become rather unadventurous in my music taste. There are a handful of bands whose albums I will always buy — for example, In Flames, Trivium, Within Temptation, Five Finger Death Punch, Asking Alexandria, and Sia — regardless of whether or not I don’t find the albums particularly compelling (I realized recently, for rather random reasons, that 2011 was a bad year for some of my favourite bands). In this respect, I adhered to Chuck Klosterman‘s truism that music fans (apparently especially men) “have a weird sense of loyalty toward the bands they like; they sometimes view record buying as a responsibility,” regardless of the quality of the album.
Few bands, however, have recently had such an immediate impact on my listening habits than Nothing More. Earlier this year, I stumbled across the video for the band’s “Don’t Stop” (below), and I haven’t been the same since. That’s a rather grand statement, to be sure, but the band’s latest album The Stories We Tell Ourselves is phenomenally good. I’ve since gone back and picked up their previous albums, as well.
The album is a collection of one great song after another. I think Nothing More are the first new band in a while to pass the goosebump test (something I’ve always believed in, but first read articulated by the band Lit in an interview decades-ish ago).
Following are a couple more videos from the album, drawing on (I hope) the full range of the band’s sound. First, here’s “Do You Really Want It?”…
… and “Go to War”…
… and finally, “Just Say When”…
Nothing More’s albums are released via Better Noise Records.
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