Local Review: Nadezhda – Battery

Nadezhda
Battery
Debit Records
Street: 01.23
Nadezhda = The Gits / The Offspring

Blending punk themes with tried and true hard rock tropes, Nadezhda fires a warning shot at the residents of Salt Lake with their debut album, Battery. The five piece band hailing from Salt Lake City has been kind enough to provide the public with an incredible listening experience that combines grunge-y guitar tones with popular jock-rock accents of the late ‘90s and early 2000s. The themes of teen angst and social ineptitude that are interlaced into the compositions found on Battery hark back to a more innocent time in all of our lives, begging the listener to remember what it feels like to be a misunderstood youth. 

The band’s chemistry and seemingly collective mindset bleeds into each and every song on Battery, showcasing their cohesiveness as an up-and-coming presence in Salt Lake’s heavy music scene. The real kicker, though, has to be the vocals. Vocalist Brighton Ballard’s diverse performance through the entirety of Battery really brings this album from cool to awesome, some notable tracks being “Curbside” and “Good Side.” Despite the album’s relative brevity, the band makes it abundantly clear where they stand in the sonic spectrum and in doing so, deliver a very focused concept. They hover between The Offspring with their hard rock, anthem-y tracks like “Waste,” “Youth Slips” and “The Gits” along with other more introspective hard rock/grunge of the ‘90s era. 

This small collection of thoughtfully intentioned tracks cuts out a lot of the fluff we’ve come to anticipate when listening through entire albums and saves the listener a lot of grief while simultaneously whetting our appetites and leaving us in dire anticipation of more tunes. Unfortunately, I must admit that Battery has left me wanting more, but only because there are not enough tracks on the album to satiate my desire to dive deeper into this band—and, in doing so, connect with a much younger version of myself. Needless to say, if you are into 2000s hard rock with diverse composition and compelling feminine vocals, give Nadezhda’s Battery a spin and keep them on your future listening radar. –CJ Hanck

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