It’s rare to find a debut album that feels this lived-in. But Nothing Is Easy, the long-awaited release from Tucson-based instrumentalist Impulse Nine, is no ordinary debut, it’s a thunderous, cinematic reckoning. Over two decades of demos, losses, griefs, and promises converge into an eight-track journey through shoegaze haze, post-rock drama, and unfiltered guitar grit.
This is music forged in the fires of mourning, but don’t expect a dirge. Nothing Is Easy carries death, yes, but it also carries life. It’s the sound of brushing your teeth after a funeral. Of punching through sorrow with melody. Of honoring parents, mentors, and cats through layers of distortion and ambient decay.
Opening with the devastating “I’m Sorry About Your Everything,” the album sets an immediate emotional tone, one that’s raw and reverent, haunted by memory and built on sonic textures that swell and sigh. But rather than sink into grief, the record evolves. “A Wake” shifts into playful territory, with jam-band looseness and bright melodic turns. “Heavy Metal Mama,” a tribute to the artist’s late mother, blazes forward with riffs that crack like whips, part love letter, part war cry.
And then comes the stillness of “Fireflies,” a tender acoustic interlude that feels like starlight in audio form, followed by the brooding swagger of “All Nighter,” which teases and taunts like it knows something you don’t. “Heat” hits like a fist, a full-frontal assault of metal riffs and arena-sized drums that refuses to sit still. Then, just as things begin to boil over, “It Might Be Fine (But I Just Don’t Know)” brings things back to a grounded groove:tight, expressive, and quietly uplifting.
The closer, “Shadow Over Johnny Ringo’s Grave,” is pure cinematic gold. Think Ennio Morricone with a fuzz pedal and a vendetta. It’s outlaw elegy meets alt-rock anthem, a closing statement that refuses to go quietly.
Impulse Nine makes it clear: Nothing Is Easy is music you feel in your chest, music that wails, roars, and weeps in instrumental language. No lyrics, no posturing, just honest-to-God emotion sculpted into song.
At its heart, this album is a promise kept. A promise to family, to self, to a younger version of the artist who dreamed big while burning CDs in 1999. Nothing Is Easy is a declaration of survival and a blueprint for artistic resilience. It didn’t come quickly, and it didn’t come easy, but it came out blazing; and we’re damn lucky it did!
