Photo by Azeta

Right now, it’s sounding like more and more bands within the current shoegaze revival’s latest wave are turning to brighter forms of psychedelia within their ’90s alternative ‘gaze. Nuclear Daisies are a rarity. Instead, they’re turning away from the sun and lighting up in the dark on “Infinite Joy”. As the Austin-based trio of former Temple of Angels member Rob Glynn, Ringo Deathstarr’s Alex Gehring, and Robby Williams, the lead single from the band’s debut album, First Taste of Heaven, is a listen that dares to venture into voids of depressive desperation without disconnecting from a violent livewire that pulses tensely throughout.

It’s more Garbage and the Prodigy in its big beat industrial mix with a thumping bassline than something of a kaleidoscopic acid pastiche, though the trip which the trio take you into the conscious’ caverns of despair are definitely a mental fuck between the Gehring’s desire to pull herself out from the under and the sinister weight dragging her back into the bleak. “Can you make us happy?,” she whispers in its final breaths before the track stops dead. This feels like venturing into your own personal level of Hell where the voices surrounding you want nothing but the worst for you, yet are all too pleased to have you there with them.

Nuclear Daises’ First Taste of Heaven will be released August 1st on Portrayal of Guilt Records.