I think it’s a well known fact that I don’t like the kind of music hardcore bands seem to have morphed into over the last year or two. So it’s refreshing when a band don’t sell themselves out and continue to make interesting and challenging records. Nora are one such band that could easily have cashed in on their relative popularity and written a record which huge hooks and crunching riffs and sat back and taken the inevitable $$$ that follows. Thankfully the band have refused to buckle to fashion and ‘Save Yourself’ is a heavy, twisting record that gets you thinking. It’s been described as the band’s own “Master of Puppets,” or “Reign in Blood,” and while that may be a slightly OTT reaction, it’s fair to say this is still a very good record. It’s perhaps best summed up in the track ‘Somebody Call Somebody’, which rocks like the proverbial bastard but not in a formulaic or obvious way. And it’s the lack of generic thinking which makes this record stand out from the pack of boring bands currently diluting what can be a thought-provoking genre of music.
