“The modern world will not be punished. It is the punishment.” ~Nicolás Dávila
The debut album of Nihilist Wasteland draws inspiration from the writings of Colombian philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila to deliver a focused critique of modernity. It fuses darkwave industrial tones with groovy synth-wave atmospheres, delivering a stark sonic vision of a world in collapse.
Across its tracks, the album examines the restless, perpetually unsatisfied modern man (Another Sky), and the bitter irony of modern life, where every machine built leaves a scar and the world is punishment incarnate (The Next Machine & Our Punishment). Chain You Wear, and Crown the Rot confront the illusion that we can escape our own nature, exposing the futility of that pursuit. With Noise Canceled and Sorrow’s Name, the record looks toward the spiritual void, charting the collapse of humanity’s connection to the vertical dimension of the sacred. In Steal the Fun, the blade turns inward and taunts the very spell these ideas cast, mocking the depressing impression the ideas of the album can leave on its audience.
What follows is a brief look at the ideas that inspired each track, revealing the thematic current that binds the album together.
- Crown the Rot: “In the last corner of the labyrinth of the soul, there grunts a frightened ape.” ~Dávila. Beneath all the sophistication, culture, and self-understanding we claim to have, there remains a primal, fearful creature at the center of our being. Strip away the intellectual justifications and the moral veneers, and what you find is an anxious, instinct-driven animal.
- Noise Canceled: “Our soul has a future. Humanity has none.” ~Dávila.
Modernity has smothered what is essential in us, burying the voices of our ancestors beneath noise and distraction. - Another Sky: “One rarely meets a man who is glad to be what he is, and wishes to be nothing else.” ~Dávila
- The Next Machine: “Modern man destroys more when he creates than when he destroys.”~Dávila
- Our Punishment: “The modern world will not be punished. It is the punishment.”~Dávila
- Steal the Fun: Take in too much of Dávila’s thought and anyone can become a curmudgeon. Tread carefully, or you may end up denouncing the world and abandoning it entirely.
- Sorrow’s Name: “Lyrical poetry survives because the heart is the only place where reason fears to tread.” ~Dávila. Reason can turn our greatest joys into sorrows and destroy inspiration.
- The Chain you Wear: “The punishment of the man who searches for himself is that he finds himself.” ~Dávila. Man cannot become whatever he desires; he can only be what he is.