"Trauma Factory" is eclectic in the best way possible

The first time I listened to the entire new nothing,nowhere album, Trauma Factory, was last night, at midnight EST during the YouTube listen party. And let me tell you, I fell in love within minutes. It was so hard to write down first listen notes because I was too busy dancing or swaying with the music or bouncing up and down or whisper singing the lyrics because it's past midnight and I don't want to wake my roommates up.

The first track "trauma factory" is reminiscent of the opening track, "outsider," on nothing,nowhere's 2018 album, ruiner. The lyrics, performed in a spoken word-type style, were leaked prior to the album's release on his website. It's a perfect opening to an album where none of the fifteen songs that make it up sound alike. It's eclectic, that's for sure, and one could tell it was going to be from the singles that nothing,nowhere released leading up to the album drop.

Every feature, every strum of the guitar, every beat of the drum, every word either sang, rapped or screamed feels completely natural. Nothing feels out of place. Are some tracks vastly different than others? Hell yeah. I mean you've got the vibey tracks like "lights (4444)" and the dance tracks like "nightmare" and "blood," but on the other ends of the spectrum, you've got a hardcore track like "death" and emotional tracks like the two that close the album, "real" and "barely bleeding." But they all work incredibly well together, which is not an easy feat to accomplish by any means. If you need proof of that, look no farther than the last four or five tracks on the album. It shifts effortlessly from the "dancing in my room" vibes to a calmer, more romantic (I'm not sure if "romantic" is the best way to describe it, but it's the closest I can get right now) vibe, to "being super real and honest and probably making you cry" vibes. The way they play into each other and use each other to bring the listener back down and into their feels is so impressive. It's pretty much flawlessly done.

Let's back track a second and look at the two features on the album. The first is on track seven, "pain place," which features producer, singer and songwriter MISOGI. It's such a fluid feature, both voices working perfectly in sync with each other. MISOGI brings something to the song that you wouldn't think it needed until you heard it for yourself. The other feature is four tracks later, on the song "blood," featuring KennyHoopla and JUDGE. The song was originally released in October as a single, along with a music video. It's energetic, it's bouncy. It makes you want to get up and dance.

Let's jump forward now. I really want to emphasize the last two tracks, Track number fourteen, "real," is exactly as the title suggests. It's real, it's honest, it's raw. It's the song that's most reminiscent of his emo rap songs. It's got the honest lyrics rapped in the verses that tells a personal story and the haunting vocals in the chorus to match. This one in particular talks about people who look up to him because how he perseveres through his anxiety and the pressure he puts on himself as well as the pressure others he doesn't even know puts on him. His anxiety had previously kept him from showing his face, and his mental health has in the past gotten so bad he's had to cancel a tour to seek professional help (he's even written a song about it, it's called "dread"). Despite it all, he's kept going, kept making music. He's always honest in his music, and this one, this one makes that so clear. It's such a powerful listen and I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry on my first listen.

The last track, "barely bleeding," features incredible vocals and harmonies. It's the longest track on the album and every second is utilized perfectly, from the range of vocals, the emotional lyrics, to every strum of the guitar and every hit of the snare. It's a song that's perfectly strung together, and it's the perfect emotional end to an album that really hits every note.

The record's eclectic-ness is by far not a bad thing. In fact, it works perfectly, and there's not a bad song or a lacking song out of the fifteen on the album. It demonstrates nothing,nowhere's range and just how much he's grown since his blow up as an emo rapper. He's breaking the genres with this one, and it's clear he's not going to stop here, so if you don't get aboard the nothing,nowhere train with this one, all I can say is you're really going to be missing out on some incredible things.

With all that said, you can probably catch me listening to this album non-stop for at least a few weeks, so I'll leave you here with the line that named the album:

"Human life is a trauma factory"

Listen to the new album here: