Press Quotes

“Philly’s best metal band is also its best avant-garde classical ensemble. Or possibly it’s the other way around. Unlike symphonic metal bands that simply layer cheesy strings over bombastic rock songs, Normal Love writes intricate and difficult instrumental pieces inspired by modernist classical composers, and then play them with death-metal ferocity. The result is music that succeeds at being alternately brutal and beautiful, sometimes both at the same time. By totally shredding and shredding clichés, Normal Love is proving that prog doesn’t have to be a four letter word.” – Stephen Potter (billboard.com)

“Normal Love constructs its own path alone. Despite the risks involved, this approach remains infinitely honorable. Like an intrepid racing car driver who, by speeding too fast along the track risks losing a wheel and therefore destroying the car, the Philadelphia band ignores the forces of order and trusts only its instinct.”

-Mathieu Carr (translated from http://www.progressia.net/index.php4?rub=chroniques&idchronik=1501)

“For all their precision, and holy hell, the aural somersaults and tightrope-walks they pull off make Cirque du Soleil look like a flea circus, NORMAL LOVE is messy. Rock ‘n’ roll messy. Spontaneous-combustion messy… NL, which recently released its debut self-titled CD on High Two, makes brutally intricate music, aggressive and perfectionist. If the Warriors had scratched past the Orphans and the Baseball Furies only to chance upon a shiv-wielding chamber ensemble, Normal Love would be perfectly cast.”
-Philadelphia City Paper {Shaun Brady}

The jazz-grind tumble of Flying Luttenbachers, the short/sharp shocks of early Orthrelm, the poke-’n’-twist of DNA, the fiery electric work of avant-jazz violinist Mat Maneri—Philly-based instrumental quintet Normal Love appeals to all of these sensibilities with a unique approach to punk and jazz. Two guitars, bass, drums, violin, all herky-jerky in a very precise and through-composed way. There’s no soloing to speak of, but there are plenty of jagged edges to catch your ear on. “Severe Confection” opens their debut CD, which makes its fanfare-like qualities a plus, and also makes the simultaneous-but-not-together aspects of the first two minutes or so all the more powerful, once they congeal into unison riffing that recalls vintage no wave and contemporary post-punk, but without the fashionable clothes. - Phil Freeman (Paperthinwalls.com)

“Philly’s Normal Love are a breed apart, ripping through hypercomplex scores with the chops of a chamber ensemble and the intensity of a metal band. Sure, they’re “loud and brutal,” ultradissonant, but darned if they aren’t poised and polished.”
-Philly Weekly {David R. Adler}

Electric guitars aren’t just for power chords anymore. Normal Love, aquintet drawn from the Philly experimental music community, may look like a rock band, but what comes out of them is much more unusual. The group is committed to playing new works by its members and other composers working in a way that combines genres, what composer/concert organizer Dustin Hurt refers to as “new rock complexity.”
(Philadelphia Metro)

Normal Love is a hammer. You are the nail. Normal Love beats the hell out of you… with precision and elegance. Their music unleashes the fiersome intensity one wouln’t even expect some metal bands to ever achieve. While being so vigorous, however, the band manages to have the rather insane complexity of a classical chamber group. Every single brutal and dissonant noise the collective creates is pre-meditated and scored beforehand. The music morphes unexpectedly from dischord to walls of noise with the help of speedy African polyrhythms. Normal Love is refreshing and their thunderous entry into the music world is very welcome.
-boardsus.playstation.com

“Off the Hook!…Normal Lvoe’s music is the kind that’s just so [erfectly discordant, so assaulting and soothing at the same time. And the thing that amazes me about these guys is the fact that they plat with this totally controlled abandon, as if the perverse manipulation of their instruments is the most natural thing in the world.”
Phawker. Com

“Technical near near- impossibility aside, Normal Love’s music molds tightly-coiled power riffing into segments of acidic beauty and transcendent force”
Signal to Noise