With short dreads, multiple face piercings and a lean and well-inked torso, Novulent—who in photos often looks downward, unsmiling—presents as a classic example of the ever-brooding artist.
And in keeping with that visage, Novulent, who uses the pronouns they/them, makes music that comes at you from a distance. Slabs of heavily echoed guitar move through slow-moving chords at sludgy tempos; the vocals are distorted, pushed back in the mix, spectral. The melodies are glacial, vague, the lyrics all but indistinguishable.
It’s OK to call it shoegaze. Novulent does. The artist stirs in elements of nu-metal, dream-pop and slo-core for music that closes in and washes over you…