Calling his music "rough kuduro,"
Nazar
's sound runs counter to the upbeat Angolan dance style, reflecting the tragic reality of his family's experience in the war-torn country. His father was a general in rebel group UNITA, which his mother also joined as a teenager.
was born and raised in Belgium after his family fled Angola during its 27-year civil war, and they reunited in Luanda several years after the war ended.
's debut full-length is inspired by his father's war memoir as well as his own experiences in Angola, driving around the country with his father and discussing the effects of the war. His rhythms are sluggish and diseased, seemingly having more in common with grime or industrial than house, and his productions are filled with the sounds of guns cocking, explosions, chopping helicopter blades, and sinister voices creeping from every corner.
Shannen SP
, who guested on
's 2018 track "Airstrike," returns on "Bunker," an ominous crawl with steadily paced lyrics about taking shelter in order to hide from armed hunters sent by the government.
's parents both pop up throughout the album; his mother, speaking in regional language Umbundu, recalls joining the independence movement during "Mother," and his father, whose face appears on the album's cover, can be heard during the first half of "End of Guerrilla." The album can seem almost unbearably tense, but the kuduro rhythms, as contaminated as they are, still inject a sense of excitement, and the music seems uplifting and triumphant rather than oppressive. The distorted thumps and dislocated bass of tracks like "UN Sanctions" are intense and mesmerizing, and additional touches like the whooping vocals of "Immortal" or the trancey synths of "Why" elevate the energy level even further. ~ Paul Simpson