- I wasn’t sure when Melbourne goth-industrial electro-punks NUN were going to unearth their new collection of nightmarish numbers, but, predictably, they couldn’t help but be drawn to the psychic beacon of Halloween. It really is what they’re all about: every aspect of horror, from the filmic to the literary to the audible, the science-fictional to the boarding school slasher; from its intellectual dissection to its most z-grade, exploitative nastiness. The quartet, fronted by Jenny Branagan have absorbed and revelled in it all, as long as it happened circa 1980.

Four years after their self-titled debut introduced us to their blended recollections of John Carpenter soundtracks, Throbbing Gristle style industrial and the gothiness of Christian Death they’re back to prove that the era has far more shining synth and sludgy horror to be reanimated for your listening pleasure. In that way, I have wondered whether the band could really be bothered to change much at all for this second go around the platter.

They’ve certainly talked about it, namechecking the likes of Human League and -of all things- Dare, as the inspiration for a newly sweetened and pop influence on Nun’s sound. For evidence they’ve proffered the single Can’t Chain, which has been out for a bit more than a minute. As dancey as the band ever get, which can be quite energetic indeed, free of the distortion and treatment that brutalised nearly all of Branagan’s vocals before now, they join with the lead synth and soar heavenward.

I don’t know if it sounds like Dare and that’s probably for the better. Outside of the single, on the whole, with a few exceptions I’m not sure I hear a much poppier inflection on the record’s sound, either. I don’t see it as a problem: for nasty, DIY synth-punk, their first LP was extremely listenable, from end to end, nearly any of its three minute snippets providing single-worthy fare. I feel the same way about The Dome, though many of its track lengths have blown out to twice what you would’ve heard from the band before. This may have something to do with it being a concept record. The title refers to one of Buckminster Fuller’s famous geodesic domes, the eponymous Bucky balls. Apparently all the action of the record takes place within one of those retro-futuristic structures, although you may have to listen quite carefully to work it out, even with the new clarity in the vox. The whirl of references to horror classics and philosophical theory scattered with urbane snippets of Fuller’s lectures, among other things, can make it a little hard to hold on to the details. I certainly found it confusing: I don’t remember any Bucky balls in Wake In Fright!

It’ll probably make NUN a little upset with me when I say I don’t hear a huge amount that sets their new record apart from their old; but, hey, I think that’s great. The Dome takes so much that’s fierce and abrasive and -effortlessly- turns it into the approachable, the listenable, the danceable. Nun’s brand of horror really let’s you embrace the strange.

- Chris Cobcroft.