Gnawing away (sorry) at the outer limits of music and misery since 2006, New York’s Gnaw have no respect for music whatsoever. Judging by this sweaty, fulminating mass of a record, the way they see it is that music should be utterly destroyed, the last breath of every tone, timbre, and texture ever plucked from a guitar string, smacked out of a drum kit, tickled from the ivories, and squeezed out of any electronic noise-producing box should be smashed to fucking bits and expression in its purest form should be its only purpose. And so with album number two, Horrible Chamber (Conspiracy Records), “music” continues to die countless deaths.
There’s nothing gentle about the delicately titled ‘Humming’. The two pendulous piano notes that swing from side to side amid the growing swathes of distortion, noise, and the incessant screams of a raving lunatic are the only remnants of sobriety or sense left standing at the close of this twisted opening track. The delirious and rampant lunatic remains with us for ‘Of Embers’, with thumping drums and bass-heavy distorted guitars swelling with feedback for the soundtrack to his maniacal discharge. With the electronica making its presence felt more so in ‘Water Rite’, the tattered and torn remains of whatever twitching cadaver Gnaw have been feeding on thus far proffers more to feast upon, its soundscape evoking a sense not of simple despair but more of complete and utter defeat. ‘Worm’, the shortest track on the album at just under five minutes, is the first to feature something akin to a riff. Guitars and bass are hacked at mercilessly; drums are bludgeoned with every beat; vocals are the voice of both tormentor and victim; and the combined mass of electronica, manipulated sounds, and homemade instruments (I shudder to think what they are made from) bubble beneath the surface and corrode this beast from within. What a fucking mess.
Populated only by winds, whispers, and the faint mumblings of sounds struggling to find form and take shape, the barren wasteland of ‘Widowkeeper’ stumbles and crumbles into the doom-infused feedback and noise that emerges as the track finds its way to a pathetic end. Here, as with ‘Vulture’ and the closing title track, Gnaw cough up the residue of the carcass they’ve been devouring to bestow upon it a suitably sick souvenir of what has already befallen this unfortunate being. But by now, the sounds that resound around this Horrible Chamber, despite some interesting noise elements emerging, have the stench of familiarity and instead of decay, despair, and desolation that fill the air, it’s despondency and indifference to the album that dominate.
Violent, filthy, desperate, this 50-minute journey is harrowing. The combination of slowly-slammed guitar, bass, and drums with terror-torn vocals and other-dimensional sounds makes for a chilling encounter. This is the soundtrack to your own private horror flick, one where the visual aspect is induced by the music. There is no choice. You must and you will suffer.
7/10
Jason Guest