ALBUM REVIEW - n0trixx – A Catalogue of Madness and Melancholia
- Rick E
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
WORDS RICK E
n0trixx –
A Catalogue of Madness and Melancholia
Release Late March 2026
There are debut albums that arrive politely, and then there are debut albums that kick the door clean off its hinges and demand to be reckoned with immediately. A Catalogue of Madness and Melancholia, the first full-length record from Russian-born, Lancashire-based bedlamcore artist n0trixx, is emphatically the latter – a self-written, self-produced, and self-designed concept album of staggering ambition that translates eleven distinct mental health struggles into sonic form across eleven tracks of industrial fury, trap-inflected darkness, nu-metal devastation, and moments of heart-stopping beauty.
I will be honest with you – I have been watching n0trixx's trajectory with growing fascination for some time now. The edgy aesthetic, the bedlamcore tag she has carved out entirely for herself, the fiercely independent creative ethic, all of it pointed toward something significant. But even with those expectations, nothing quite prepares you for the full weight of what she has actually delivered here. This is not simply a good debut. This is the kind of debut that other artists spend entire careers trying to make.
The context matters, and it matters enormously. n0trixx permanently resides in Britain on the Global Talent Visa programme, having fled Russia following her arrest for protesting the war in Ukraine. Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, she channels those lived experiences directly into every corner of this record. This is not an artist using mental health as a conceptual device for effect – this is an artist for whom the subject is inseparable from her identity, her history, and her survival. That distinction runs through every single track and gives A Catalogue of Madness and Melancholia a raw authenticity that is genuinely impossible to manufacture.
The album was born from a realisation mid-writing that every track she was developing was a sonic representation of a specific mental health condition. Rather than redirect, she leaned in entirely – and the result is a record that functions as both a deeply personal document and a startling act of empathy, inviting listeners to step inside states of mind that most people will never fully understand from the outside. Think of it as a guided tour through the rooms of a troubled mind, with n0trixx as your unflinching guide.
The album opens not with a bang but with something far more unsettling – a slow, atmospheric descent into dark, horror-filled electronics that immediately establishes the conceptual framework of the record. n0trixx described this track as the gates of an abandoned asylum, each subsequent song a door creaking open within it, and that image is precisely what the music conjures. It is not a traditional opener in the conventional sense; it is an act of scene-setting of the highest order, and by its close you are already fully committed to wherever this is going to take you.
Any pretence of a gentle introduction is immediately and violently abandoned as hysteria [БЕГИ] detonates with a propulsive urgency that is physically arresting. Tackling Depression and Suicidal Ideation, the track builds with n0trixx's twisted rap flows shifting mid-song into Russian entirely – a decision that transforms the already charged atmosphere into something genuinely disorienting and vulnerable in the most powerful sense. Written during one of the darkest periods of her life, this is n0trixx at her most exposed, and the contrast between that emotional rawness and the relentless driving tempo beneath it makes for one of the most arresting opening salvos on any debut album in recent memory.
The lead single and one of the album’s most immediately devastating moments. Revenge On God explores dementia through Yentl Cambre's (The Wrong Kid Died) barrage of crushing riffs set against n0trixx's fierce rap flow, screams, and dark trap beats. A chilling middle-eight repetition of the phrase “daddy loves me” encapsulates the bewildering horror of the condition with a precision that cuts right through you. As n0trixx herself puts it, this is a disorienting spiral through aggression, oblivion, confusion, remorse, and back again – and the music matches that description note for note. The accompanying Loki Films video is as unflinching as the song itself.
What makes harmless so extraordinary is the distance it travels within a single track. It opens as something almost beautiful – soaring vocals from n0trixx riding weightless, majestic synth pads in a way that is genuinely lovely before the bottom falls out entirely. The switch arrives around the lyric “crawling as I tear myself in two,” and what follows is a viscous metal collapse driven by ear-crushing flanged riffs from Sarunas Brazionis (Sacrificial Slabs, Biomechanimal) that is as physically impactful as anything on the record. As a sonic representation of Borderline Personality Disorder – that acute emotional volatility, the lurching between serenity and collapse – it is startlingly, uncomfortably accurate. Filmed in an abandoned mental asylum, the music video directed and edited by n0trixx herself adds yet another dimension to an already remarkable piece of work.
A haunting multilingual trap performance piece written in collaboration with journalist John Paquin, Hé Toi addresses Dissociative Identity Disorder and is one of the most atmospherically compelling moments on the album. The shifting tones and textures within the track mirror the fractured inner dialogue of the condition with an uncanny precision, and hearing n0trixx move between languages adds a layer of otherness and estrangement that is deeply affecting. This is the track that most clearly demonstrates her gift for making the conceptual viscerally felt rather than merely illustrated.
We all have to collectively acknowledge that St. Chaos is the beating, caffeinated, barely-contained heart of this album – an ADHD-themed eruption of rapid-fire beat changes, machine-gun vocal delivery, and the guitar work of Jesse Alston that creates one of the most explosively satisfying tracks n0trixx has recorded to date. There is an almost ironic brilliance to the structure here: a track about ADHD that itself refuses to stay in one place for more than a few seconds, lurching between an almost old-school punk vocal approach in the early going and a frenzied mid-section that has to be heard to be believed. It is ferociously fun in the way that only the best heavy music can be.
The album’s sole fully instrumental track and an absolute masterpiece of sound design. Representing Autism, Spectrum begins with a stillness that feels deceptively calm before gradually accumulating layers of noise, sensation, sirens, and static nonverbality that build into a genuinely overwhelming mass of sound. It is a track that does not describe sensory overload – it recreates it, and the effect is both deeply uncomfortable and profoundly empathetic. Just when you think you know where the album is heading, this arrives as a reminder that n0trixx is operating on an entirely different creative level to most of her peers.
Rooted in a 1960s interview with a catatonic schizophrenic and featuring Warren Willis (ex-Linkin Park) on keys, Catalepsia is the moment at which the album reaches its most genuinely unsettling emotional register. The track embodies the collapse of reality and identity with an almost clinical precision, n0trixx's vocals shifting between haunting and powerful as the arrangement builds from fragility into something approaching total dissolution. The presence of Willis on keys adds a cinematic grandeur that elevates the composition considerably – this is the kind of collaboration that only works when the songwriting beneath it is strong enough to carry the weight, and here it absolutely is
Heavy, claustrophobic, and deliberately disorienting, Living Nightmares represents Psychosis through fractured trap beats and a deep dark rap delivery from guest duo FMA + 12 Gage that changes the album’s tone immediately and completely. While they rap in unison, n0trixx sings in Russian beneath them in a register of such soft, almost detached beauty that the contrast between the two halves of the track is genuinely vertiginous. The atmosphere is that of someone trapped inside a distorted reality in which the walls are steadily closing in, and the production choices throughout reflect that with impressive accuracy. It is a heavy undertaking that delivers every time.
The most personal track on an album of deeply personal tracks, and the one that hits hardest of all. A blisteringly honest first-person account of surviving narcissistic abuse from a parent, narc is the moment at which the conceptual album becomes pure confession, and n0trixx has described it as the first time she was able to fully articulate what she had endured. The jagged industrial rap, the raw energy, the track’s refusal to resolve neatly – instead ending abruptly, the silence arriving like a physical thing – all of it adds up to something that feels genuinely cathartic to listen to, even as a witness rather than a participant. It is an extraordinary piece of emotional truth-telling.
The last track was also of particular interest, and I’ve had the opportunity of sitting with this album in full many times now – and every single time, when you are loved arrives, it disarms you completely. After everything the album has put you through across the preceding ten tracks, the soft oscillating synth pads, the wide open space, and n0trixx’s hushed breathy voice feel like exactly the aftercare the record requires. It is a tender mantra of self-acceptance and closure that never tips into saccharine, and the question of whether it is entirely sincere or faintly ironic somehow only adds to its power. It is the perfect final door in the asylum – the one that opens not into darkness but out into light.
What makes A Catalogue of Madness and Melancholia such a genuinely remarkable achievement is its absolute commitment to vision. This is clearly an artist who went into this project with a specific concept and refused to flinch from it, refused to soften its edges, and refused to second-guess herself at any point. In an era when so many artists hedge their artistic bets and try to appeal to multiple audiences simultaneously, n0trixx has made a record that is uncompromisingly and unapologetically itself. It will not be for everyone. But for those who appreciate music that does not merely describe the darker corners of human experience but actively inhabits them, this is essential listening.
“A Catalogue of Madness and Melancholia is a journey into the depths of a troubled mind. I was halfway through writing the album when I realised that every track, I was working on was a sonic representation of a certain mental health issue. Further into the album, I managed to create a unique collection of disorders in an audio form. It invites the listener to experience what it might be like to struggle with one of these but also stresses how important it is to take care of mental wellbeing.” – n0trixx
Bedlam has never sounded so vital – n0trixx has delivered one of the most important debut albums of the year
4/5
A Catalogue of Madness and Melancholia
FULL TRACK LIST
1. Into the depths [intro]
2. hysteria [БЕГN]
3. Revenge On God feat. Yentl Cambre
4. harmless feat. Sarunas Brazionis
5. Hé Toi
6. St. Chaos feat. J.A.
7. Spectrum
8. Catalepsia feat. Warren Willis
9. Living Nightmares feat. FMA + 12 Gage
10. narc (i'm so happy that you're dead)
11. you are loved [outro]
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