Nucleus Torn – Travellers (2011)

Released as a compilation album “Travellers” features most of the band’s earlier works and two unreleased songs. All of the earlier songs have been re-worked and sound better than ever. If you are into Neo-folk and Avant-garde music, this is a brilliant opportunity to catch up with the band’s discography.

“Travellers” starts off with the 4 songs of the “Krähenkönigin”. All of these songs are mainly neo-folk pieces and feature no vocals. Fredy Schnyder the band’s mastermind, multi-instrumentalist, producer, mixer, and jack of all trades has done a great job in making these four songs sound even better than the first time.

Next up, we have the 4 songs of the “Silver” EP, here we get a taste of vocals, distorted guitars and some psychedelic elements that change the pace drastically for this compilation release. In “Witness” the mixture of acoustic guitars with sudden burst of distorted guitars make for a great song, but “Nucleus Torn” is the best song in this ‘section’ since the psychedelic elements make it very interesting and diverse from the rest of the “Silver” songs.

The next two songs are from the “Submission” demo, and “Neonlight Submission” and “Traveller’s Rest” are by far our favorite songs. Having some psychedelic hard rock influences mixed with folk section, these songs are very interesting and show a side of Nucleus Torn that many people are not used to listening.

Of the two unreleased songs, “Leadless” is a very interesting piece that has some folk rock influences mixed with some Jazz elements. “Lurking” features a higher pace than most songs here and closes the album very nicely. We think that these two songs are a nice closure for the release and follow a nice transition, even though they seem to be in a backwards manner in terms of the band’s career.

In general, if you like the neo-folk side of the band then the first 5 songs (and some other ones here and there) will suffice to fill you appetite. But if you like the ‘weirder’ and more dynamic sound of the band’s earlier work then the newer versions of these songs makes this CD a very worthwhile purchase.

Release: Janurary 11th, 2011

Country: Switzerland