Many moons ago, a bunch of friends and I used to co-host a college radio show here in the town we call home. Given our Sunday night slot, we were your local metal-and-wise ass-commentary weekend wind down for the small handful of folks who chose to tune in. Also because of that slot, and our devotion to it, we would encounter a rotating cast of on-air hosts running their own shows in the slot preceding ours over the years. One of those shows was run by a super-cool woman I only ever knew as Alyssa. I can’t for the life of me remember what her show was called, but I do recall a playlist of noisy punk, hardcore and riot grrl-type clatter. During our brief weekly chats as we were entering and she was leaving, we discovered she played in a punk band called the Goddamn Godamns (still one of my favourite band names ever!) and later in stoner/doom trio Astral Witch. Once the radio station cleared house of the distortion pedal domination of its Sunday night programming, I pretty much lost track of Alyssa save for running into her at the occasional show or while randomly wandering around town.
When the promo came through hyping up Void & Decay, the latest from Within Nostalgia, something seemed familiar about this particular blackened, post-doom outfit. It would appear that ‘Goddamn Alyssa’s mother refers to her as Alyssa Broere and at some point she moved five hours north to North Bay, Ontario in order to mastermind this project. Within Nostalgia’s history goes back to 2013 and features plenty of lineup up-and-downsizing with previous incarnations as a one-woman project, a quartet and a trio. These days, the band counts itself as a duo with Broere handling vocals, rhythm guitar and bass and being joined by drummer and lead guitarist Kye Bell.
Tomorrow sees the official release of the band’s fourth record, Void & Decay a five-song homage to anxiety, depression, the ills of society, our crumbling environment and all the crap that makes fans of Katatonia, Agalloch, My Dying Bride, et al. ache for a night in front of a roaring fire sipping warm cider and red wine while clobbering themselves in the forehead with the collected works of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Or, as the band puts it, “Void & Decay as a whole showcases the more intense side of the band. It’s an EP that was birthed through pain, confusion and discontent with the world around us and when listening to the final product it definitely shows our own mindset at the time.”
As such, below we offer all y’all the opportunity for an advance listen of the record as accompaniment to all your dark thoughts, philosophical ponderings and woozy hair whipping.
All the usual contact and ordering info and all the usual online spots:
