I’ve been fostering a love of heavy, weird music for a while now—you can probably blame Sunbather for kicking me down that hill. But in the last year or so that I’ve been writing for Tuned Up, I’ve mucked about through darker, grimier swamps than I had ever expected, and enjoyed it far more than I would have ever thought.

One of the murkier records that I’ve fallen in love with in that time is Luminous Rot from the long-running drone/doomgaze duo Nadja. From first blush, it can feel oppressive and impenetrable, but there’s a tension between the thick, sludgy instrumentation and the almost tender songwriting that makes for an engaging listen.

Strictly from an aesthetic perspective, Luminous Rot is right up my alley. The guitars are never played without the fuzz pedals turned all the way up. Ambient noise sputters in the atmosphere. The drums—often programmed with industrial drum machines—lurch slowly as if straining against the heaviness of the guitars like an ox against the weight of a plow. Vocals are rare and subdued (barring some buried screams), as if they lack the fight to pull themselves out from under the guitars for air. Everything is run through a thick layer of reverb to make it feel distant and alienating. To use a crude algebra, it’s almost as if someone threw Sunn O)))) and Nine Inch Nails in a blender and hit puree.

But for all of the abrasive intensity of the sonic palette, there’s an odd tranquility here—not unlike the noise-induced zen that guides the songwriting of My Bloody Valentine. At a point, the sounds stop being harsh and become a sort of warm blanket. The best example is the twelve-minute “Cuts On Your Hands,” in which the guitars spend most of the runtime swinging between two chords like a hypnotist’s watch. However, that’s the MO of every track here: except for the brief “Intro,” every other song is well past the six-minute mark—and even “Intro” is as long as your typical pop song at 3:28.

The closest comparison I can make with this album is to The Angelic Process’ Weighing the Souls With Sand. It’s not just that they sound similar, employing similar clouds of fuzz and reverb. Plenty of records sound like this. But Luminous Rot is the only record I’ve found that makes me feel the same way that Weighing… does.

When it comes down to it, Luminous Rot is the perfect title for this record. The name itself communicates the same sort of tension: luminescence and decay are generally pretty far apart in nature. But these songs capture both essences perfectly: the heavy, creeping inevitability of decay and the bright, glowing hope of luminescence.