For many of us who’ve been awaiting the full-length return of the crushing riff assault and blasting punishment from the one-and-only NAILS; the wait has come to an end. The band’s newest album, Every Bridge Burning, arrives on August 30th via Nuclear Blast, and it’s every bit as pummeling, in-your-face, and confrontational as you’d want it to be.

For as savage and snarling as Every Bridge Burning sounds, it took founding guitarist and vocalist Todd Jones some time to not only piece together a quality lineup, but to really build up the inspiration potent enough to transform into a NAILS-worthy album. When it came time to follow up You Will Never Be One Of Us, Jones revealed, “I felt totally uninspired.”

He continues, “I would play guitar every day and nothing interesting came out - nothing I liked. In the summer of 2019 we delivered a 2-song EP to Nuclear Blast, and then COVID hit in early 2020…it might’ve been a very productive time for some folks, but for me it was completely unproductive - at the beginning of it. I just wasn’t inspired to do anything, it felt like the world wasn’t moving…it wasn't a real motivational time for me.”

During the pandemic, Jones found himself at a creative stand still, where he stopped playing guitar and stopped listening to music altogether. However, after a while, he began to find joy within some of the music he was exposed to throughout his upbringing.

“I got back into listening to some of the stuff that was played around my house growing up, a lot of ‘60s music. The Byrds, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and stuff like that,” he explains. “Then I started getting into ‘70s music. Then on to ‘80s music, and when I started listening to ‘80s music, I started listening to more hardcore. A lot of the early hardcore stuff from when I first started getting into it; bands like Minor Threat and Dead Kennedys - stuff like that. I was never really a big Van Halen guy growing up, but during COVID I got really into them. I just started learning some songs, really diving into their David Lee Roth catalog and really came to fall in love with that stuff. That really gave me a spark to start playing guitar again.”

For Jones, finding that spark was crucial. He then was able to coordinate with creative riff maestro Shelby Lermo of Ulthar, bringing him into the mix to collaborate on songs, textures and tonal gains. Then, things really progressed once Jones began jamming with drummer Carlos Cruz (also of Warbringer) in September of 2022.

“Playing guitar felt a lot better for me,” says Jones. “Any riff I throw at (Cruz), he makes it sound good. My brain was just getting more interested and stoked to be playing in the band, because I had this great drummer who made everything sound good.” Later on, the band recruited Andrew Solis on bass to round out the lineup.

Every Bridge Burning confronts the listener with a noticeably louder, heavier, punkier, electrifying, and as Jones puts it, “more expressive” presence. Where NAILS’ previous material had more of a relentless powerviolence feel to it, the new record opens up slightly more through the groove-laden, punk, and classic metal elements that inspired some of Jones' writing.

“I wanted to be more expressive with the guitar playing for this record, which I think lends itself to tracks like ‘Give Me The Painkiller,’ ‘I Can’t Turn It Off,’ and ‘No More Rivers To Cross.’ I feel like the guitar playing on those songs in particular is more expressive than past NAILS stuff. That ties into what I was saying about Van Halen. I got to a point with the guitar playing where I just wanted to do something new.”

Jones continues, “Every NAILS record is very similar to each other, but there’s also an angle in each one that can’t be found in any of the other ones. There needs to be something that sets each album apart…I was stoked to do some different guitar stuff and thought, well, I’ve been listening to Motorhead and Van Halen a lot. I could flex that muscle in my guitar playing, so I went down that route. The most important thing for us when it comes to trying out something new is: Does this sound like NAILS? Is this gonna disappoint our fans? But once we demoed the songs, we strongly felt they’d get it.”

And NAILS make it very clear that no punches were pulled in the making of this album. Every riff is filtered through buzzsaw distortion and delivered with hostility, blazing through 10 songs in under 17 minutes. Furthermore, Jones executes his most deranged and twisted sounding vocals heard on any NAILS record. He’s committed to maintaining the aggressive tendencies synonymous with the core sound of the band.

“Something I will not do with NAILS is ask fans to spend money on an album that I feel is not up to standard with the other NAILS records,” states Jones. “Besides being a musician, I’m a huge fan of music. When there's a band that I deeply love and they put out an album I don't like, it’s almost offensive, like, what the fuck? It’s really disappointing. I don't want to upset the fans, I really fucking don’t. They’re part of the main reason this album even exists.”

“This music really represents how I feel right now in my life and I put everything I can into it, man. It’s another brick in the wall of our discography. I don’t have a really grand vision for it. I just want to, number one, express myself. Two, I want to make NAILS fans stoked. And three, I want to go play shows.”