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Nothing’s Dreams Burn Down on New Single ‘The Dead Are Dumb’

Philadelphia shoegaze denizens Nothing may seem out of place on their current home — renowned metal safe-haven Relapse Records — but you can’t say they’re not heavy. Their story certainly is: Having been formed by frontman Domenic Palermo after serving a jail sentence and parole period, Palermo recently endured a mugging (and associated injuries), the death of his father in a tragic accident, and his band’s unfortunate then-association with Collect Records, the Martin Shkreli-funded label that folded in a heap of controversy.

And their music is, too: The band’s new single, “The Dead Are Dumb,” is as sonically overwhelming, emotionally intense, and thematically mournful as any of the label’s thrashier releases, with gorgeously echoing and flaring guitars, and drums that crest and crash like Ride’s Nowhere. Like the best songs on DIIV’s Is the Is Are, “Dead” so cleanly channels the spirit of the guitar-walled dream-pop greats that Nothing feel more like successors than revivalists.

Find “The Dead Are Dumb” on Tired of Tomorrow, the band’s follow-up LP to 2014’s acclaimed Guilty of Everything, out May 13 on Relapse.