Washington D.C.’s NØ MAN is a necessary and much-needed voice in modern hardcore. Formed in 2017, the four-piece punk band has been alchemizing the personal and the political from the jump. Composed of members from Majority Rule, the band’s current aims go hand-in-hand with their past, sonically and thematically.
Their upcoming album Glitter and Spit is the band’s third full-length LP, solidifying their furious hardcore into a weapon of a record. Album opener “Eat My Twin” twists and refracts a mid-tempo riff into a sonic hammer, cracking open the record’s heaviness to come. Singer Maha Shami has fully come into her own as a frontperson, snarling out the most vicious vocals of her career on “Poison Darts.”
As the daughter of refugees, returning home to Palestine included witnessing first-hand the casual atrocities inflicted on her family. Though written before the current conflict’s boiling point, Glitter and Spit synthesizes the 70+ years of systemic violence carried out against Palestine and her own lived experiences. From school teachers and classmates telling her Palestine doesn’t exist, to being humiliated by soldiers at checkpoints when she visited her family, these many moments fuel the album’s lifeblood, coalescing on “Can’t Kill Us All.”
“They want to silence us,” Shami said at a recent benefit show in D.C. “We will be louder. We aren’t fucking going anywhere. Because Palestine will never die.” Glitter and Spit is a much-needed fire of an album, fueled by the anxieties and anger of the now, erupting in a cathartic inferno.
The band’s members Matt Michel (guitar/vocals), Pat Broderick (drums) and Kevin Lamiell (Bass) helped lay the foundation for hardcore and screamo in Majority Rule from 1996 to 2004. Alongside the band, vocalist Maha Shami has been a longtime friend, giving a “cameo” guest vocal performance on Majority Rule’s “Packaged Poison” in 2004. When Majority Rule reunited in 2017 to perform multiple benefit shows, it ignited a desire to keep creating, and no one was better equipped to step in as front person than Shami.
Their energy and spirit have brought them together on tour with bands like Portrayal of Guilt, Darkest Hour, FAIM, Entry and more. In 2023 they collaborated with former tourmates and fellow iconoclasts The HIRS Collective on the song “Sweet Like Candy.” They’ve also contributed to Secret Voice’s (the label of Touche Amore frontman Jeremy Bolm) compilation Balladeers, Redefined.
Glitter and Spit was recorded and mixed by Matthew Michel at Viva Studio, and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege.
Track Listing: 01. Eat my Twin 02. Glitter and Spit 03. Poison Darts 04. Eye Spy 05. God’s Neighborhood 06. March of Ides 07. Can’t Kill Us All 08. Monument to Pleasure 09. Burning Skulls 10. Damaar
