When NUR first landed on IDIOTEQ, they were already carrying the kind of weight that comes from years spent shaping a sound in the shadows. Their previous work marked an aggressive shift—“blackened post-hardcore soul,” as we wrote back then—and it revealed a band ready to break out from the post-metal framework of their early work. Now, with Shock Mentality, their first-ever LP, that shift finally arrives in full scale, bringing with it not just a sharpened sonic identity but the entire story of who NUR have become over the years.
The last time NUR were gearing up for something big, the world shut down. “We have put out on 2019 our last EP on a 12 inch vinyl via our label Suicide Records… had a great tour booked in Europe with our good friends ABEST… we were also booked to do Droneberg festival in Hamburg… and then covid happen as we were ready to buy our plane tickets and everything went on hold.”
Those first months were static. Everyone stuck at home. But the existence of N10—their own studio in Haifa—became the turning point. “We could just go downtown and play,” they recalled, with Eran, Liam and Eyal all living in the same city and bassist Ben traveling in from Tel Aviv.
Meeting once or twice a week at N10, they began tearing into what their sound could be. The big realization came from a track on their previous EP—The Snake. That was the direction. Lower tuning. Sludge and hardcore. Less of the sprawling post-metal structures. “Me (Eran), Eyal and Liam are from the hardcore punk scene of Haifa,” they wrote. “Covid in a way made us feel that we are done with long post metal songs and we are ready to make aggressive music but still incorporate our post metal sound into it.”
This intersection—hardcore instincts, sludge density, post-metal atmosphere—became the blueprint for the LP.
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Their inspirations read like the DNA of chaotic heaviness: FULL OF HELL, PORTRAYAL OF GUILT, TODAY IS THE DAY, THIS GIFT IS A CURSE, OLD MAN GLOOM, CAVE IN, YAUTJA, CONVERGE, and more.
“The new song came to us when we wanted to explore our new sound and approach to agrassive sludge/hardcore,” they wrote back in 2022, announcing that The Line Age would become part of their first LP. That promise is now fulfilled—Shock Mentality closes with that very track.
They always intended to take this new stuff on the road. “We are really hoping to go on tour next year aiming for an EU tour CZ, DE, BE… maybe FR or NL (If you are a promoter hit us up). We want to finish our new album, record it and go on tour with it.”
The band has existed for more than a decade, with years of quiet reshaping behind the scenes. “Half of which included multiple revolving members and work in mystery,” they write. Liam and Ben joined after the first EP was already recorded, which pulled the band into new territory as tastes shifted. The result is an LP that’s “angrier, faster, denser in information and features a sound that we can only describe as a blend of every heavy genre we listen to.” Ben later moved to Leipzig, prompting a new, still-fresh lineup that is already functioning smoothly.
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What emerged lyrically is something the band didn’t plan but eventually recognized as the record’s spine. “This album, more than anything, has to do with the times we live in and how they touch upon our personal lives… humanity is going in a road that each day seems more and more doomed.”
The title becomes a lens: trauma, violence, desensitization, and media structures built to weaponize shock itself. “Slowly, the only things that break through that wall of apathy are those which manufacture a reaction of shock and horror… media companies know that, and use that to gain our attention and deflect it from things that actually matter.”
They quote “Our Nature” to crystallize the point:
“advertisers love this; officers love this; clerics love this; politicians
love this; we will love this; we won’t know any other option”
Track-by-track: the full architecture of collapse
The Lesson
The album opens by asking whether humanity has learned anything at all after centuries of war and destruction—whether intellect or bloodshed has taught us anything.
Creon
Using metaphors from the Greek myth of Antigona, the band reflects on arrogance and selfishness, showing how constant contrarianism isolates more than it empowers.
Ship Rat on a Ship Wreck
Modern extreme individualism becomes a death sentence: in an age of climate crisis, we drown alone rather than work together.
Excuses
A dialogue between someone convinced they can never be wrong and a narrator observing the absurdity. Narcissistic logic collapses under reality.
Rally to Extinction
The message is blunt—we’re not just heading toward extinction; we’re celebrating on the way there, leaving the next generations to pay for choices they never made.
Our Nature
The album’s clearest statement: humanity is the way it is because we prefer comfort to change, even when comfort leads to ruin.
Irae
Rooted in the medieval hymn Dies Irae, this is a personal reflection on wrath, anger, short temper, and the distorted stories we tell ourselves.
The Line Age
The closer reframes the album’s themes through our relationship with the digital world: big tech, AI, social media, and the creeping enslavement to an online identity that erodes who we once were.
Artwork as confrontation
The album cover is designed to provoke—and clarify.
“To the unsuspecting eye, the view of hanged KKK members has that exact type of shock value. On the other hand… the message is very clear — we will not tolerate any kind of racism and fascism, even if it offends someone.”
It mirrors the record’s obsession with shock, desensitization, and the moral lines that cannot be crossed.
The local scene: growth, crisis, politics, community
NUR’s story is inseparable from Haifa’s shifting underground. Over the past 2–3 years, “our local scene as always is growing up in numbers and bands,” they wrote. A new venue, Z – City, became a focal point. Releases from KARKAIT, ATAMEO and KETORET marked high points.
The pandemic boom brought younger listeners into punk and metal through social media, and the war in Gaza pushed political punk back into urgency. Benefit shows for Palestinian communities remain frequent “even after the ceasefire.” The city’s erosion of support for the government and army has made political conversations less taboo.
N10, their rehearsal space, continues to be a hub, with bands honing their craft there weekly. But venues remain a fragile ecosystem. Their friends at the Shukri label held a crucial space for years, hosting shows, producing cassettes and contributing heavily to the community, but with their departure from the country, its future is uncertain. Some new options seem to be surfacing, offering a sense of momentum.
The band offers shoutouts to the artists and spaces shaping their world:
- NECROGUTTER (Eyal’s other main band, death metal)
- MAMNOU3 (Liam’s other band, post-hardcore)
- ATAMEO & MAHLUTA (featuring members now in the new lineup)
- HMARA, NIGHT ROAR & RITES (bands practicing weekly at N10)
- RABBIT HOLE (Arab-owned bar on Masada Street hosting shows almost weekly)
- MARY LIVE (formerly The Syrup — the location of their upcoming album release show)
Shock Mentality is the cumulative result of a decade of lineup shifts, a pandemic reset, a tonal recalibration born from The Snake, a return to hardcore roots, a redefinition of heaviness, and the social, political and digital anxieties shaping daily life. It marks the band’s fully realized identity: “angrier, faster, denser… a blend of every heavy genre we listen to.”
NUR have reached a point where sound, message, and context finally align. And with Shock Mentality, that alignment becomes undeniable.
