Ever since reviewing their album and interviewing vocalist Alan Dubin about how much the city of Hoboken sucks ass, NYC horror doom industrialists Gnaw have had a soft spot in my heart. As much as possible, anyway, given how unpleasant the music is to the ear — which is on purpose, of course. Now Gnaw have scheduled some in-person type goings on and the PR wire has the info. Dig:

Following a recent appearance at NYC’s Apex Fest III, as well as several other shows, the city’s harshest infected industrial doom unit Gnaw continue to sonically erode landscapes, announcing more local live action and more in the coming months.

Kicking off Saturday, December 5th the unit will destroy Brooklyn’s Club Europa alongside Chicago’s Earthen Grave (featuring Ron Holzner from doom legends Trouble, members of The Living Fields and more, and virtuoso violinist Rachel Barton Pine) and Iron Man (heavy doom from Baltimore, featuring the guitar wizardry of Al Morris III).

Next up, Gnaw want the airwaves! On Tuesday, December 8th the band will rape the city and all other lands via a live radio broadcast from WFMU 91.1 FM studios, on Brian Turner’s Show on-air and on http://www.wfmu.org.

The band will be concentrating heavily on composing their second album in the winter months, but will break February 12th for a set at John Zorn’s NYC performance space The Stone, dedicated to experimental and avant-garde performers.

Gnaw features members Alan Dubin (ex-Khanate, OLD), Jamie Sykes (ex-Burning Witch, Thorr’s Hammer, Atavist), Carter Thornton (Enos Slaughter), Jun Mizumachi (of NYC industrial icons Ike Yard), Brian Beatrice (Emmy Award-winning sound design/mix wizard), and most recent addition Eric Neuser.

Gnaw live bashings:
12/05/2009 Europa – Brooklyn, NY w/ Iron Man, Earthen Grave
02/12/2010 The Stone – New York, NY

When I learned that former O.L.D. and Khanate vocalist Alan Dubin lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, after reviewing This Face, the debut from his new band, Gnaw (pictured above), I knew immediately that as someone whose hate-filled screams drove doom to newer, darker depths than it had ever seen before, he’d probably have an interesting take on the town.

Hoboken is situated just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and is connected to it via a rail system called the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson). PATH trains also run from Newark and Jersey City, but in Hoboken particularly, a commuter culture based largely on wealth and class privilege has submerged other resident demographics to become the face of the town. And that face is one of unmitigated douchebaggery.

Once comprised of a healthy immigrant community (mostly Italian; both Frank Sinatra and baseball are said to have been born there), real estate and rental costs overpriced even in this collapsed economy have made it impossible for a working class to thrive, and so what’s left are the kids from further out in the suburbs who don’t want to pay city prices even though they probably could instead move to Hoboken and take the PATH. Though this (as Dubin explains below) results in a wealth of places to find good sushi, it also means that anyone visiting the town is bound to be exposed to these soulless accountants-by-day-date-rapists-by-night and their self-obsessed, shallow companions. Even better, now they’ve started having kids and main drag Washington St. is thusly booming with mom and pop baby boutiques. As a lifelong resident of Jersey, I know it is the worst of everything bad about the Garden State.

His voice is the sound of all things disgusted, and even though Gnaw — a five-piece also including Jun Mizumachi, Jamie Sykes, Carter Thornton and Brian Beatrice on various noises and instruments — operates in a more blackened industrial vein than did Khanate, the same contempt that fueled Dubin then is evident in This Face, all the more prominently for the aural horrors surrounding it. Below, the vocalist discusses his place of residence, the dynamics of his new band and writing process, and finally clears the air concerning the status of Khanate.

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It’s 1:52 in the morning as I start this. I thought after listening to it this afternoon the best time to review Gnaw’s This Face (Conspiracy) would be late at night, when everyone else had long since gone to bed and the light coming out of? the three windows in this room was the only light in the whole valley as far as I could see. The headphones were on, but I took them off because this album is too horrifying to listen to with your back to the door.

They’ve done a good job of letting their potential audience know about their pedigree, and with vocalist Alan Dubin a veteran of minimalist doom oracles Khanate and Jamie Sykes boasting time drumming for Burning Witch (the two bands having in common guitarist Stephen O’Malley, also of SunnO)))) they have something decent to brag about. Dubin’s rasp takes center stage here — I like to imagine him hiding around a corner on Washington St. in Hoboken, biting fingers off yuppies as they walk by — and the ugliness behind is busy enough to catch fans of his former (maybe? Who the hell knows what’s up with Khanate.) band off guard. For the first 10 seconds, I had to make sure I didn’t slip in the new Napalm Death record by mistake.

Gnaw should have called themselves Gnash, because where I think of gnawing as a gradually painful process, as in a wolf gnawing its leg off to get out of a trap, a gnash happens quickly, and Gnaw waste no time in inflicting themselves upon the ear. They slice and rip and dig out a hole in the psyche, offering malevolent electronica sweeps and bleeps and soundscapes of dim growing dimmer light. I’m starting to fall asleep and all my dreams are red.

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