45 Pounds - YHWH Nailgun
YHWH Nailgun’s debut album sounds like the lumbering movements of a scrapyard golem; industrial flames and electricity flickering off the jagged edges, an avalanche of percussive metal churning within its shambling gait. How are four dudes from New York making this unholy racket? YHWH is Zack Borzone (vocals), Saguiv Rosenstock (guitar), Jack Tobias (synth + electronics), and Sam Pickard (drums), but the quartet are completely uninterested in the basic functions and conventions of their tools.
Each instrument fuses into the next. When Borzone’s voice splinters and cracks on opener “Penetrator” it preforms fission with Tobias’s glistening synths. And figuring out the difference between Rosenstock’s white-knuckled guitar work and Tobias is impossible. Both made groaning, wounded elephant sounds that echo out in fear and pain. Tobias also coats Pickard’s kick drums with 808-style bass swells, adding brass knuckles to his already mighty punch.
The emotional peaks of the album sound like a volcano falling in on itself, and violence hangs over every song like smog. New ideas arrive Chestburster-style, leaving viscera and terror in their wake. The erupting groove of “Pain Fountain” is decimated by a sudden machine-gunning synth, while “Ultra Shade” stumbles into its bridge with a sound that can only be described as a deeply corrupted Microsoft error sound pinging across Pickard’s lurching drums. And Pickard has another star turn on the frenetic, frenzied drums of “Sickle Walk.” Meanwhile, Borzone screams adlibs replicating whizzing bullets in the same tone as Buffalo rap fixture Griselda (am I saying YHWH should be on the next Westside Gun album? I’m not saying no).
Fleeting moments of pop coherence are just snatches of lucidity that vanish. Pickard’s use of rototoms recall the cheesiest moments of ‘80s prog rock, or even flashes of New Jack Swing, but the way he absolutely hammers those motherfuckers is too unremitting for pop. On “Tear Pusher” Borzone spells out the title as a hook, but each letter seems covered in barbed wire as it scrapes through his throat. When he hollers “Vultures lift me by my hair/ I feel like the king of the sky,” it’s easy to imagine him as Prometheus, punished for giving fire to mankind, birds feasting on vocal cords instead of his liver. Borzone has a velociraptor cry, each consonant like a pyroclast wrenched from his chest. There’s a rare, graceful 5/4 groove thanks to Pickard’s skittering drum pattern on “Animal Death, Already Breathing,” though if anyone with Borzone’s rasp asked me to “Come outside” I’d be convinced I was stalked by Baba Yaga.
The album’s most visceral moment is a blinding section of towering synths and guitar on “Blackout.” The motif punctures the tension for a gentle moment, until it returns later in the song, corroded and horrifying. Screaming strings lurch behind the massive chords, like a church organ catching fire, the once heavenly refrain too bright, too blinding, curdling comfort into terror.
All of this is crushed into 45 Pounds’ astonishing 20-minute run time. But YHWH’s opening salvo is so blistering that it doesn’t feel like an EP, or a demo. The brevity is part of what makes 45 Pounds feel fully formed. These are lean, cut to the bone songs, a wasted second would be anathema to the energy the quartet bring.
That efficiency is reminiscent of NYC hardcore, but the touchstones critics (including myself) have brought up are basically a collective, confused shrug. The mathematical burn of early Battles, the unhinged ferocity of Death Grips, the writhing death drive of fellow New Yorkers Model/Actriz? Sure. But YHWH’s approach to influences appears to be feeding them through a woodchipper and fashioning a sound out of the debris. Every touchstone, every previous iteration preforms self-emulation; the sacrifice creating something wonderous and violent.