This isn’t about evading genre tags; it’s about reconstructing something that already exists. YHWH Nailgun is a New York band with a true blue rock setup plus synths, but it barely sounds like its setup, pushing into experimental terrain foreign to rock’s reality.
A combination of itchy-footed drums and passionate chord switches round out 45 Pounds on Changer; a fitting finale that ends out of the blue, a good bookend for an album of such musical uncertainty. I tell you; these groovy fuckers are too groovy for television.
And as soon as the album begins, everything is deconstructed; Jack Tobias’s synths sweep; rhythms sling themselves all over the shop; singer Zack Borzone mutters about somebody only known by the name “she” and other frightening imagery. Lyrics are undoubtedly secondary, hardly unessential, but drowned out by the chaos of Saguiy Rosenstock’s unrecognisable guitars and Sam Pickard’s full use of rototoms.
The album’s drums are more-or-less its signature. I’m so gripped by the isolated drumkit strikes of Animal Death Already Breathing, that sound so authentically removed from the synth dungeon that surrounds them. As the band dips into gasping Show Me the Body territory on Blackout, it lets primaeval drums devour it as it busts its own belly.
Castrato Raw (Fullback) is the closest we come to a genuine garage band sound, but as YHWH Nailgun resemble Talking Heads huffing the dust in the loft, they’re burning down the garage. There is an amazing snap just over halfway through, in which a progression/rhythm of two ‘deep in thought’ chords is followed by everyone except for, you guessed, Sam Pickard and his crazy arms.
Emptying a sachet of quirky custard, signatures arrive from unexpected sources, the YHWH status quo, and combinations of both. A staccato gunfire effect murders us to end Pain Fountain – that’s what we get for even thinking about dipping our toes in their pain fountain. Borzone takes breaks from snout-singing on Iron Feet so that Tobias’s synths can creek in a mix of discomfort and beauty. Explosions of keyboard and drums sound as though they’re ready to be sampled for a hip hop song on Tear Pusher, which also features tilt-a-whirl, looping toms that again look to hog attention.
The album, very obviously, avoids any conventional songwriting. Once committed to, it drifts into the band’s stylism, and away from any semblance of hook to the point where listenability does suffer in places. More screams, governor? Nailgun get caught in their own traps on Ultra Shade (Beat My Blood Dog Down), before reenacting the drum civil war on Sickle Walk; bust ‘em up solo sections versus cheaper-sounding digital effects – the Nailgun way of doing things has it in it to overwhelm.
But as far as unusual, out-there art is concerned, 45 Pounds is in its own league. Ballsy anti-rock is the promise YHWH Nailgun have…promised… and their eccentricities shine through their debut album via dynamic, inventive musicianship.