It’s important to distinguish that YHWH Nailgun are a noise rock band in the transcendent sense, similar to how Turnstile are a hardcore band who is spiritually hardcore in ethos, but on a different plane sonically than the rest of their scene. The dream would be for 45 Pounds, the debut album from the Brooklyn band, to do for noise rock what Glow On has done for hardcore in the mainstream. Is that realistic? A pessimist might not think so considering the current state of the industry where it’s an uphill battle for anyone from the underground to rupture a seismic shift that rattles the top, but if you can imagine a world where even an album steamed in chaotic cynicism can resonate because of it’s different shape on a form, then this first impression from the buzzworthy can be that welcome disruption to the norms.

The canvas of what we’re normally used to hearing from that noise realm — a steely post-punk sheath, some industrial weight lobbed behind its riffs, and an ambiguity of distortion blurring guitar and synthetic wires — has been recontextualized into its own subversive pop exploration of sorts here. Xiu Xiu, Gang Gang Dance, Abe Vigoda, and a nascent HEALTH come to mind in its vein when listening to vocalist Zack Borzone, drummer Sam Pickard, guitarist Saguiv Rosenstock, and keyboardist Jack Tobias busy their soundboard with visceral impulse: Borzone’s hoarse, indecipherable tongue, which sounds split from the mouths of Kim Gordon and WU LYF’s Ellery James Roberts, punctuates its firing percussion as rhythms palpitate in a synthetic wilderness. They occasionally rupture and bleed out violently through cut electric jugulars before remerging back into a cellular building block.

45 Pounds‘ 20-minute-plus listen equates to sensory cardio workout that challenges sound, color, and motion, and physics really to chronically redesign and align on YHWH Nailgun’s direction while never ever fully coming untethered from the center of its shifting gravity. It may not seem obvious on the first go round, but the more orbits you give it, the more the four-piece’s noisy deconstruction of pop and rock fundamentals begins to take on a fully-formed body that’s flying closer to the sun, proving that the rest of what’s being created out there has no reason to be as obvious or predictable as they are.

Highlights: “Castrato Raw (Fullback)”, “Ultra Shade (Beat My Blood Dog Down)”, “Sickle Walk”

YHWH Nailgun’s 45 Pounds will be March 25th on AD 93 / Many Hats.

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