Written by Barlovv
> Non Serviam – We Are Nothing But Your Krill
> Electronihilisme
> Released August 5th, 2022
> Bandcamp Link
Drink the chalice,
All of us,
We are nothing,
But your krill.
I’ve never found genre to be a particularly useful method of categorization. While it can be helpful in narrowing things down, I feel like its purpose isn’t really to categorize, but rather to impose limitations. Something doesn’t meet the base tenets of a genre, and so it is excluded. Leading to more and more splintered subgenres and offshoots that it becomes impossible to navigate and we all isolate ourselves into silos at war with each other.
What the fuck was I talking about?
Right, We Are Nothing But Your Krill is the latest from Non Serviam and god fucking damn is it ever something special. The last time I felt similarly was listening to the absolutely exceptional Here I Lie Buried With My Rings and My Dresses by Backxwash. This open defiance of genre and avant-garde production just instantly gets it’s hooks in me and I can’t stop listening to it, and it sticks with me even when I’m not listening to it.
We Are Nothing clocks at 43 minutes, and yet Non Serviam describe it as a “mini album” which makes me so excited to go back and listen to the rest of their stuff and also builds some hype for whatever behemoth might be coming next. A lot of the lyrics are in French, the band hailing from Paris that makes sense, and despite being a Canadian my french is nothing short of abysmal. So I won’t pretend to know exactly what is being said from end to end, but there is a level of intensity and just… grinding fury that makes the band and the album impossible to misunderstand.
There is so much focus on display here, everything feels deliberate even in its most chaotic moments. I don’t imagine this is going to drop from my rotation anytime soon. Even the fact that the band lists a side project, Biollante, which is an experimental hip-hop project shows through in this album. It is one of those things that feels pointless to describe because it’s hard to be clear about what a person can expect.
The Bottom Line
We Are Your Nothing But Your Krill joins the ranks of my favourites of the year. That is either a ringing enodorsement or an omen, depending on what you think of the rest of the stuff I like I guess. Go listen to it.