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NERVOSA
Slave Machine

Napalm (2026)
Rating: 8/10

A new Nervosa album can only mean one thing – more spitting scathing thrash. With arguably their heaviest opus yet, the all-female mob brings their darkest slice of cover art to date. It seems a world away from the generic Ed Repka-styling of the 2014 debut album, Victim Of Yourself, and musically there’s no room for humour as the combo rattles off a selection of prime thrash fury and, more importantly, with what appears to be a stable line-up.

Nervosa has been a revolving door of band members with only guitarist and, more recently, vocalist Prika Amaral remaining from the foundations laid in 2010 by the then São Paulo, Brazil-based outfit. The other current quartet of musicians all joined in or after 2022, the first being guitarist Helena Kotina, followed by bassist Hel Pyre and drummer Michaela Naydenova, and then, to confuse matters further, last year Sisters Of Suffocation guitarist Emmelie Herwegh joined the fold, also on bass.

The band’s sixth full-length opus, Slave Machine, is a blaze of hostile riffs, hammering percussion and spearing leads delivered with guttural precision. Prika is a scowling howling beast, scraping her tonsils with every note as the riffs churn with belligerence. Opening strike ‘Impending Doom’ (cue obligatory cheap but effective promo video filmed usually on a rocky landscape, desert, on wasteland or in a warehouse!) is comfortable in inserting some deliciously melodic axe work at the halfway stage, but for the most part it’s the deadly serious Nervosa I anticipated. The dynamics shift seamlessly between razor sharp aggression and occasional slightly slower passages, some of which bring Testament to mind.

You know what’s on the horizon though. The title track hits with such clinical venom, with bass and drums teaming up as such a hostile package to accompany the serrated riffage. While Nervosa appreciates the roots of thrash, their sound is very much modern and produced with such clarity. There’s plenty of groove to behold too within those massive, tight rhythmic grinds.

‘You Are Not A Hero’ boasts groove elements with its cutting riffage, but for the most part the album is about cold aggression, and how Prika hasn’t blown her vocal chords I’ll never know. As if her throat channel has been coated with smouldering ash, she scowls her way through the likes of ‘Hate’ (which also features some killer lead work) and the hyper ‘Beast Of Burden’ with such hostile conviction, but her versatility comes the forefront on ‘Ghost Notes’. Arguably one of the more melodic tracks, although still as aggressive, Prika’s style is more of a blanketed charcoaled snap. Even so, occasional flits into more harmonious vocal tones are evident; her seething capabilities perfectly matched by the ravenous riffs and the spiralling leads which slither with such a polished menace.

‘The Call’ is probably the track which comes close to old school Nervosa, bringing to mind old Slayer with its striking, but at their most experimental Nervosa churn out a slightly industrialised ‘Speak In Fire’ with its sneering slower pace which then kicks into a flash of dazzling lead work.

Everything seems to marry up so well with this line-up and having Michaela return to the ranks brings extra tight energy, but it’s a record that displays a multitude of musical talent as each instrument acts as a vital cog in this well oiled machine that we will all become slaves to. If Nervosa can maintain this line-up then the live shows will be crushing.

Neil Arnold

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