Rachika Nayar’s Heaven Come Crashing Review: An Instrumental Epic
A deep dive into desperate longing and emotional intensity driven by heavy guitars and sudden explosive percussion.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Heaven Come Crashing is an instrumental ambient guitar-heavy album created by Rachika Nayar.
- The record is almost entirely drum-free, save for a massive drum and bass beat drop at the 2:30 mark of the title track.
- Wordless vocal contributions by Maria BC float across the title track and the stunning album closer.
- The album serves as a reflection on unhealthy romantic obsession, reckless passion, and emotional distress.
Nayar’s debut record Our Hands Against The Dusk featured zero percussion whatsoever, and Heaven Comes Crashing follows a similar path by staying mostly drum-free. Listeners will find rapid-fire mechanical hi-hats on the second track, Tetramorph, while the back half of track six, Gayatri, features a snare buried deep within the mix.
However, at two minutes and thirty seconds into the title track Heaven Come Crashing, an enormous drum and bass beat suddenly drops before the record immediately retreats to the soothing textures of Sleepless just one song later.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
Nayar’s unique brand of guitar-heavy ambient music plays almost like an alternate-universe version of M83, where Anthony Gonzalez mines his instrumental epics for pure emotion rather than drawing inspiration from 80s pop music. The album achieves heavy emotional weight using remarkably few words, with Maria BC providing wordless laments floating over the title track and the final track, Our Wretched Fate.
Guitar-driven ambient and ambient emo music often relies heavily on heavy processing, reverb, tremolo-picking, and layered textures to evoke a sense of vast space and isolation. By minimizing traditional vocals and lyrics, artists like Rachika Nayar allow distorted guitar lines and atmospheric drones to carry the narrative weight, perfectly matching themes of desperate longing and internal conflict.
The album also acts as an indictment of unbridled passion, highlighted by track three being titled Death and Limerence to spotlight unhealthy romantic obsession over fulfilling partnership. U2-esque guitar lines eventually drown beneath heavily reverbed tremolo notes, leading into the maximalist panic of 90s synths on Nausea and the surging energy of Gayatri.
Source: The Verge
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