There’s a peculiar kind of magic in an album that can make you feel like the main character in a movie you didn’t know you were starring in. Nothing Is Easy, the debut from impulse nine, is exactly that—a sweeping, guitar-heavy instrumental journey that manages to balance the heaviness of personal apocalypse with flashes of joy, tenderness, and beauty. Released August 8, 2025, this eight-track collection doesn’t just soundtrack your day—it rewrites it into something more epic, more dangerous, and somehow more alive.
It’s tempting to start with the music, but with impulse nine, the backstory is inseparable from the sound. This is not the work of a fresh-faced newcomer. It’s the result of over 25 years of musical isolation, hundreds of demos, and one man—Steve, based in Tucson—quietly building a sonic world in private. The album’s emotional charge stems from a series of personal tragedies in 2016, when Steve lost multiple family members. The grief was profound, but so was the love and joy that existed before and during those final moments together. Nothing Is Easy is his attempt to capture that entire arc, distilled into wordless compositions that speak directly to the marrow.
The lack of lyrics is not a gimmick. If anything, it’s a relief. Without words to steer you toward a fixed meaning, the songs give you space to project your own stories, memories, and losses onto them. It’s music for when you want to feel without having to explain yourself—grief without melodrama, joy without sentimentality. The emotional punch lands harder precisely because you’re not being told what to feel.
The album opens with I’m Sorry About Your Everything, a track that immediately sets the tone: cinematic, sprawling, and heavy enough to rattle the walls, yet laced with a kind of melodic generosity. It’s not a dirge—it’s a wave, carrying you forward whether you’re ready or not. By the time A Wake rolls in, the mood shifts toward something more contemplative, like walking through the ruins of a memory with sunlight filtering through the cracks. Guitars shimmer here, layered in a way that feels almost shoegaze, but with a precision that leans toward post-rock.
Heavy Metal Mama is where impulse nine flexes its rock instincts, a track that hits like a long-lost B-side from the loudest corner of ‘90s alternative. It’s tight, punchy, and unashamedly fun, the kind of song that reminds you joy can still exist even in the middle of mourning. And then comes Fireflies, which feels like the album’s heartbeat—gentle, glowing, and impossibly intimate, a reminder of fleeting moments that somehow outshine the darkest days.
By the time All-Nighter kicks in, the tempo and intensity surge again, mirroring that delirious, slightly feral feeling of being awake too long with too much on your mind. It’s chaotic in the best way, the guitars and drums locked in a push-pull rhythm that refuses to settle. Heat simmers by contrast, a slow-burn build that finally boils over into something jagged and cathartic. It’s the sound of August asphalt at midnight, air heavy with tension.
The penultimate track, It Might Be Fine (But I Just Don’t Know), captures the album’s central tension: the uncertainty of moving forward after loss. The song never quite resolves—it swells, falters, and swells again, as if embodying the process of learning to live alongside grief rather than past it. Then comes the closer, Shadow Over Johnny Ringo’s Grave, a title that sounds like a forgotten Western but plays like the credits to a film you’re not sure you survived. It’s elegiac without being morose, ending the album not with a bang, but with a horizon—open, infinite, and tinged with both possibility and absence.
Musically, Nothing Is Easy is a carefully balanced hybrid. It draws from shoegaze’s dense guitar layers, post-rock’s dramatic crescendos, hard rock’s grit, and even ambient’s patience. There’s no filler here—every track earns its place, each one a distinct chapter in a larger narrative. You can hear the influence of ‘90s rock in the textures and tones, but it never feels trapped in nostalgia. Instead, it takes those sounds and pushes them into widescreen territory, as if they were always meant to be this cinematic.
Steve’s production approach is meticulous but not sterile. The guitars are front and center, of course—sometimes roaring, sometimes whispering—but the rhythm section is equally essential, giving the songs their momentum and shape. You can tell this music was built in solitude, yet it doesn’t feel insular. It’s generous, reaching outward, inviting you into its world.
In an era where many instrumental records drift into the background, Nothing Is Easy refuses to fade into wallpaper. It demands your attention without shouting for it, and rewards close listening with details that reveal themselves slowly: a harmonic hidden in the mix, a chord change that feels like a sudden turn in a conversation, a drum hit that lands just slightly behind the beat. It’s music that’s been lived in before being shared.
The album’s tagline—“Music for your personal apocalypse”—isn’t just clever branding. It’s accurate. Whether your apocalypse is literal or metaphorical, large or small, there’s something here that will fit. It’s the rare record that can accompany both the heaviest day of your life and a quiet evening spent watching the sky change colors.
With Nothing Is Easy, impulse nine isn’t trying to fix anything, or to offer easy answers. It’s a document of survival—not the clean, triumphant kind, but the messy, ongoing process of it. In the end, that’s what makes it resonate. You don’t finish the album feeling “better.” You finish it feeling understood. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.
After 25 years of building songs in the shadows, Steve has brought impulse nine into the light with an album that is both deeply personal and strangely universal. Nothing Is Easy may have been born out of grief, but it’s far from a funeral march. It’s a testament to endurance, to the beauty that persists alongside pain, and to the idea that even when nothing is easy, something can still be worth holding onto.
And if you happen to play it during your own personal apocalypse—well, at least you’ll have the perfect soundtrack.
