YHWH Nailgun – ’45 Pounds’ album review: a taut blast of experimental punk that plumbs the arcane
THE SKINNY: There’s no name more apt for New York electronic post-punk mob YHWH Nailgun. Welding ancient spiritual divination—’YHWH’ the original four-letter Hebrew name for God—and stabbing industrial hazards illustrate their ascendant mysticism that lies amid the swirling cascade of corrugated cacophony.
Something arcane is worryingly conjured on each of 45 Pounds‘ blasts of experimental bruise, each track fizzing and sputtering like a chemical reaction. The interplay between synth abuser Jack Tobias and Sam Pickard’s panicked percussion expertly straddles both free-form nebulousness and restrained focus—as if their drum and electronics have been fed through a dodgy audio scrambler or even genetically spliced together in some lab disaster.
Pain is hammered into 45 Pounds. What might have been conventional post-punk pieces or mere synthpop belligerence is twisted and crumpled into new anxious states, each song’s anatomy snapped and jerked into disjointed, unnatural forms. The aural stress positions still wrestle a groove or beat from the noise rock mayhem, forever keeping an eye on the somatic, visceral pulses and machine funk that glows at the album’s ground zero with strange, alien club energy.
The awe-inspiring heft behind YHWH Nailgun’s drilling pummel owes much to frontman Zack Borzone’s animalistic vocals. Possessed by a primal howl, his poetic yelps lurk and hide amid the din, leaping out of the shadows with terrific fright before hiding around the corner again. There’s rust and bolts in his coarse gravel, which corrodes along with Saguiv Rosenstock’s abrasive textured guitar attack, enmeshing itself with elemental presence and weaving in and out of intelligibility amorphously.
In an age of ‘flooded zones’ and media overload, 45 Pounds score the contemporary noise with pitch-perfect savagery. The panicked rush with which YHWH Nailgun’s debut LP shoots out the speakers with precarious force is fittingly choking, busy, and gasping—at times, Borzone’s hacking vocal spits begging for a moment’s breathing space, a sensation we can all relate to in the contemporary hellscape.
45 Pounds has one mode: dilated pupil urgency—and the gang never deviate. Yet the record is taut and regimented enough for the frenzied pace to never drift into a disorienting chore, the punk clangour over in less than 20 minutes. YHWH Nailgun has crafted a confident exercise in experimental electronica guided with laser focus yet never stifled by expectations, never a doubt that the band know exactly the factory depths they’re plumbing even if we don’t.
For fans of: corrosion resistant steel roofing.
A concluding comment from Wickes: “No refunds”.
45 Pounds track by track:
Release: March 21st | Producer: Saguiv Rosenstock | Label: AD 93
‘Penetrator’: A punishing whine before stretched glossy synths introduce the pandemonium with a fitting snarl. Borzone is in serious need of a Strepsil or two following his guttural bellows. [4/5]
‘Castrato Raw (Fullback)’: An exemplary flash of YHWH Nailgun’s unique conjuring of dancefloor hook lost in post-punk translation. Faded horn blasts and loose drums fuse afrobeat with factory rumble. [4.5/5]
‘Pain Fountain’: A deeper, rawer descent into metallic fury with its nerve endings on display. Machine gun drum machines are a wonderful touch of robot dread. [4.5/5]
‘Animal Death Already Breathing’: We’re witnessing YHWH Nailgun firing on all rusty cylinders. Warrior drums punctured by an alien growl edging toward implosion by a wheezing, cracking ambient hulk. [5/5]
‘Ultra Shade’: Brutal and to the point. Its piston propulsion evokes an alluring unease. [3.5/5]
‘Iron Feet’: A cold, resonant tune is hammered into this one. Sentient metal beings fighting in some strange, cast-iron dimension featuring Borzone as the otherworldly commentator. [3.5/5]
‘Tear Pusher’: Pickard’s drums are extra volatile, and Tobias mangles and pulls apart his synths into gargantuan sheets of imposing drama. All hurriedly taking place in one of the stranger corners of the album. [4/5]
‘Sickle Walk’: Further discombobulation and inside-out confusion. No surprises, but it works. [3.5/5]
‘Blackout’: There’s a flogging scrape that punishes throughout ‘Blackout’, caked with thick slathers of disquieting space. Abrupt breaks only heighten the drama. [3.5/5]
‘Changer’: All masterfully swirls together for a pugilistic finale. Drums are dialling the mania up an extra notch, and Borzone blasts one last hacking vocal growl. [4.5/5]
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