You probably assumed there was no earthly way that "Only Shallow", the opening track on My Bloody Valentine's immortal Loveless, could possibly get any heavier or more monolithic. And there, apparently, you would have been wrong: the Toronto metal-gaze duo Nadja proves it on the first seconds of their audacious and spectacular new covers record When I See the Sun Always Shines On TV. Their version slows the tempo so drastically that the song feels like it might derail; listening to it feels like watching a drunk friend stagger to their front door and praying they don't trip on their dragging feet. The guitar fuzz is wince-inducingly harsh, as if Aidan Baker gave his amp the Dave Davies treatment: i.e., two slashes straight right through the head. The vocals, while still buried, emanate low and warped from the bottom of the mix instead of floating weightlessly above it. If you could chop and screw a shoegaze record (screw-gaze?) it might sound like this, and Nadja's roaring wind-tunnel version manages to render MBV's original airy and harmless by comparison, as blasphemous as that might sound.

For an ambient metal act, Loveless is basically Everest, and for Nadja to tackle one of its signature songs and flawlessly stick the landing for the opening track of their record gives just a hint of When I See the Sun's ambition and reach. Of all the droning metal-gaze groups-- Isis, Caïna, Katatonia-- Nadja have the best grasp on massive distortion's ability to alternately bludgeon and soothe, and the overwhelming wall of body-vibrating noise they summon on record is a profoundly physical, even sensual experience. When you produce a sound this enormous, it begins to live a life apart from you, and Nadja have spent their career taming and harnessing the beast they have created. Their previous records were mostly exercises in sound worship, the sort of amniotic sound tanks you immerse yourself in with a pair of boutique headphones when you want your mind obliterated. But on When I See the Sun, they seem to want to prove they also recognize great songwriting, and it turns out they not only have impeccable taste, they also have an instinctive understanding of the type of songs that tend to increase in mystery and intimacy when swaddled in an impenetrable fog of guitars.

Some of their choices are intuitive, even obvious-- the cover of "Pea", for instance, from Codeine's 1990 slowcore classic Frigid Stars, feels even more numbed and despondent than the original, which was one of the more emotionally naked, vulnerable moments on the album. Swans' "No Cure For the Lonely", from 1992's Love of Life, is another logical selection, and Nadja hit every step in the song's endlessly descending chord progression with a bleary thud. Their rendition of the Cure's "Faith", meanwhile, is one of the only moments where their reach slightly exceeds their grasp; Baker's murmuring, chant-beneath-the-waves vocals don't quite fit a song that laid so much at the feet of its miraculous vocal performance. It's impossible to hear the contour