Nails - You Will Never Be One Of Us (LP) - Transparent Green Vinyl

Some records feel like a dare. You Will Never Be One of Us is one of them. Nails dropped their third album on June 17, 2016 through Nuclear Blast, and it still hits like a crowbar to the ribs. The Oxnard trio keeps the runtime brutal and efficient, but nothing here feels slight. With Kurt Ballou at the controls at GodCity Studios in Salem, the band’s attack lands with that familiar chainsaw grind and ironclad low end that blows the doors off small speakers and still feels three-dimensional on a decent setup.

The lineup is the classic Nails engine: Todd Jones out front with that serrated bark and concrete-block riffing, John Gianelli locking the bass into a single-minded thrum, and Taylor Young throwing elbows from the kit. Ballou’s production doesn’t sand anything down. Guitars are thick with HM-2 snarl, the kick drum feels like it’s mic’d from inside your chest, and the vocals sit right on top, spitting slogans that sound built for sweatbox rooms and face-level stage monitors.

The title track sets the tone in under two minutes. It’s a war cry, the kind of opener that makes you stand a little straighter and check your surroundings. “Friend to All” arrives like a flashbang, a short shock that clears the room for “Made to Make You Fail,” which jerks between blast-furnace speed and a mid-tempo stomp that would’ve fit on an early Entombed single if that band grew up on California hardcore. “Life Is a Death Sentence” is pure fight-or-flight. Then “Violence Is Forever” stretches the template, letting a grim, almost melodic lead snake through the noise before the hammer drops again. Those small shifts matter on a record this concise. They give the chaos outlines.

“Savage Intolerance” and “In Pain” keep the pace cruel, but the album’s secret weapon is how it builds to something bigger without going soft. “They Come Crawling Back” is the tell. Eight minutes of tar-thick riffing and slow-motion dread that proves Nails can do menace at any speed. The band lets the air turn poisonous, stretching out until the whole room seems to hold its breath. If you’ve ever wondered whether this crew could write a near-epic, there’s your answer.

Context helps. Nails had already carved their name into modern hardcore and grind with Unsilent Death and Abandon All Life, but this one felt like a coronation. The songwriting is tighter, the groove hits harder, and the record arrived to a wave of coverage that crossed scenes. Metal and punk outlets lined up to praise it, and you still catch it on year-end lists from 2016 in places like Rolling Stone and Stereogum. It’s rare for a band this feral to cut through wider noise without giving up an inch. They did.

If you’re the type to chase the physical version, You Will Never Be One of Us vinyl is the way to feel that low-end shove. Ballou’s mixes reward turntables that can track dense, bass-forward records, and the space between instruments pops in a way streaming never quite replicates. I’ve spun a few copies of Nails vinyl over the years, and this is the one I pull when I want to show a friend why heavy music people won’t shut up about GodCity. If you hang around a Melbourne record store long enough, someone will eventually nudge you toward it. Same story if you browse vinyl records Australia listings or buy Nails records online during a late-night hunt. It’s a quick add to cart, then a louder-than-recommended volume knob.

People sometimes pigeonhole Nails as pure speed, but the record’s real trick is movement. Blast beats crash into D-beat gallops. Riffs pivot on a dime from treble-shredded to swampy. The band never lets you settle. That restlessness gives the record replay value well beyond the initial shock. And Jones’ vocal cadence works like another rhythm instrument, a bark that stitches the whole mess together while planting lines you’ll catch yourself muttering under your breath days later.

Ten tracks. About twenty minutes. No fat. No mercy. If you’re filling a shelf of Nails albums on vinyl, this is the spine that stands out. It’s the moment where the band’s underground legend and studio execution met at full power. Put it on, feel your pulse climb, and remember why short records often live the longest.