Review: "Parasites and Butterflies" by Nova Twins

This is the kind of album that makes me want to be a "music reactions" Youtuber. There's some difficulties to that, though. The job tends to require you to have massive ignorance of a broad cultural corpus or be willing to fake it. So it's a young man's game, or a grifter's. And the parasocial bonding element requires someone from whom viewers seek approval. That's not old white metalheads. Quite the opposite, in-fact. Metalheads want everyone to share their enthusiasm. Kids, old folks, people of color, academics -- people generally considered outside the heavy metal cultural milieu. We love posturing as unapproachable, but we're the pick-mes of music culture.

So unable to easily bring our music to other people, I'm glad Qobuz's awful genre curation brought me Nova Twins in the weekly heavy metal releases recently. Lordy this isn't metal. At all. But it's sick and Qobuz's slippery grip on genres is probably the only reason I learned about it.

In fairness to Qobuz, what the hell can you call this? "Parasites & Butterflies" spits in the face of genre classification. Nova Twins can broadly be called "rock music," but what did that even mean anymore? And what does it mean when the British duo adds ample electronics, hip-hop swagger, noise, hyperpop, and deceptively beautiful melodies?

Everything on the album has a drive that would feel at home in the edgier side of Kpop and a few American pop classics like "Toxic," but everything is louder, meaner, and more aggressive. It's unabashedly weird and Zoomer as fuck. Give it a listen.

Released on Norman Records UK on August 25, 2025.
(listen on streaming services)