Review Summary: This is How It All Ends.
Screamo has been steadily revived over the course of the last few years, with several seminal acts releasing albums that are of high quality and great replay value. When it comes to screamo (real screamo I might add), there are a few key ingredients that are commonplace amongst the arsenal of the acts in question, including scathing vocals (in Nuvolascura's case, female vocals) and twinkly mixed with dissonant guitars as well as chaotic and all over the place drumming. Stae Faults' released an absolutely monolithic album in the form of Children of the Moon last year, which no doubt popped up on the radar of many screamo fans. To put it bluntly, no better record has been released in the past two decades - Children of the Moon proved to revolutionary, spearheading modern screamo into the spotlight. Whilst that album cannot really be compared to this, you get an idea of just how the genre has been catapulted into the foray of modern screamo acts with promising and legitimate talent and the capability of being incredible as well as enjoyable.
So here we have How This All Ends, Nuvolascura's sophomore release and boy, is it exceptional. There is a defined and perfect sense of balance concerning the melodic and dissonant sections displayed here with a rather bombastic guitar attack that switches between the two aforementioned moods and more. The vocals are scathing, vitriolic yet also controlled - and the way they navigate through the album switching between all out dissonant breakdown mode and melancholy, even pretty sounding melodic sections is most definitely one of the major attractions of How This All Ends. The first three tracks are an assault of the most concise sounding, furious modern screamo that mixes together a wonderful amalgamation of heavy, soft, melodic and atonal atmospheres. Everything here sounds wonderfully well produced and the final product is an album brimming with fabulous riffs, superbly tailored breakdowns (which are a lot more commonplace here than on their debut) and some seriously well delivered screaming vocals.
It would be hard to pick out certain songs that stand out here - overall, this is the sort of album that is best enjoyed in one whole sitting - short enough to be profound, yet compelling enough to keep the listener engaged throughout it's short runtime. Album closer Polar Destinies is the longest affair the albums has to offer, coming in at just over six minutes - as with several of the other tracks on offer, it is a fantastic showcase of modern screamo mixed with elements of metalcore and post hardcore. The dissonance in the guitars is quirky and not overused - there is a certain level of technicality adhered to here that wasn't present on their debut and this works all the better for it. In terms of blinding albums, Nuvolascura's sophomore effort How This All Ends ticks all the right boxes - downright nasty emoviolence complimented with a heavy overtone of metallic metalcore chaos. As far as screamo goes, this is the cream of the crop - expect this band to blow up this year with this release under their belts - quite geniunely, one of the finest modern screamo albums to come out this year so far.
