I suppose it’s fair to say the prospect of a new Gnaw album is something to look forward to, but keep in mind who and what we’re talking about here. It’s not something you look forward to the way you look forward to an ice cream sandwich, or a warm sunny day. It’s the kind of thing you look forward to the way you look forward to having your skin flayed. The Alan Dubin-fronted Brooklyn purveyors-of-that-which-is-fucked will release their third full-length, Cutting Pieces, as their first offering through Translation Loss on Oct. 27. Preorders are up (link below) and they’ve got the suitably scathing “Septic” up as a streaming preview and you can check it out at the bottom of this post if you’re feeling particularly daring.

Noteworthy that as Gnaw move past their last outing, Horrible Chamber, they welcome Insect Ark‘s Dana Schechter to the lineup. Not that they were exactly hurting for experimentalism before, but there’s just about no way she doesn’t add to the atmosphere of Cutting Pieces. All the more reason to look forward to the record’s arrival, you know, in that particular kind of way.

From the PR wire:

GNAW To Release Third LP, Cutting Pieces, Via Translation Loss In October

New York City-based experimental/noise metal outfit GNAW has completed the harrowing third album, Cutting Pieces, securing the record for late October release through Translation Loss Records. The LP’s “Septic” is now playing as the label issues preorders and more.

Closing a four-year gap since their acclaimed Horrible Chamber LP (Seventh Rule, 2013), GNAW crawls forth from the gutters once again, dredging forth some of their most unnerving audio assaults to date on Cutting Pieces. The seismic atrocities and haunting intricacies on Cutting Pieces leave an instantly damaging, long-lasting impression, their cumulative decimation undoubtedly producing GNAW’s most cinematic terror to date.

Decibel unleashes the first single from Cutting Pieces, through an exclusive stream of “Septic,” featuring background vocals courtesy of Stefania Alos Pedretti of OvO. GNAW issues of the track, “‘Septic’ is one of the faster tunes on the album. The guitars sound like razors and the ending is utterly creepy. We’re honored to have Stefania from OvO on it thickening up the chorus with her unique cave-woman like voice.”

Translation Loss will release Cutting Pieces on LP, CD, and digital formats on October 27th; find preorders at THIS LOCATION.

Watch for additional audio samples including multiple videos and more on Cutting Pieces to be issued up to and through the album’s release.

A recent personnel shift sees the GNAW lineup now including Dana Schechter (Insect Ark, ex-Angels Of Light) on lap steel guitar, joining returning assassins, Alan Dubin (Khanate, OLD), Brian Beatrice, Carter Thornton (Enos Slaughter), Eric Neuser, and Jun Mizumachi (Ike Yard). Cutting Pieces was written and recorded over the past two years at various studios and locales across NYC, the bulk of the music was written by Thornton, Beatrice, and Dubin with all members creating sound elements and arrangements, the final record mixed by Beatrice. Coalescing with Dubin’s twisted lyrical visions, these factors culminate into the outfit’s most terrifying movielike torment and tension yet. The album was once again mastered by James Plotkin. The graphic and type design for the cover was done by French designer Sebastien Hayez who did the first two GNAW albums as well.

Collectively, GNAW utilized an extensive arsenal of instruments on Cutting Pieces, including guitars, bass, drums, voice, lap steel guitar, Chinese cello, Weevil, conga, sawed off Kramer, Drone Thing oscillator, Alto sax, homemade light oscillator, micro cassette recorder, chain link fence, a small child, 2002 Toshiba laptop, voice dictator and space bar, and more. Cutting Pieces also features guest musicians Stefania Alos Pedretti of Italian noise rock act OvO contributing background vocals to the track “Septic,” and Swiss saxophone player and sound artist Antoine Chessex (ex-Monno) contributing saxophone and amplifier to “Triptych.”

Cutting Pieces Track Listing:
1. Rat
2. Septic
3. Wrong
4. Prowled Mary
5. Extended Suicide
6. Fire
7. Triptych

With more widespread tour plans coming together for later this year and next, GNAW has booked several upcoming NYC-area shows, including the Nightside Of Eden Fest at The Paper Box in Brooklyn on October 7th alongside Acheron, Kult Ov Azazel, Sardonic Witchery, T.O.M.B., Abazagorath, Teloch Vovin, and more. GNAW will also play a record release show for Cutting Pieces at Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn on October 29th, joined by Couch Slut, Syndromes, and more.

GNAW Live:
10/07/2017 The Paper Box – Brooklyn, NY @ Nightside Of Eden Fest w/ Kult Ov Azazel, T.O.M.B.
10/29/2017 Saint Vitus Bar – Brooklyn, NY *record release show w/ Couch Slut, Syndromes

https://www.facebook.com/Gnawtheband
https://www.translationloss.com
https://www.facebook.com/TranslationLossRecords
https://twitter.com/TranslationLoss
https://translationlossrecords.bandcamp.com

New York-based ambient horrifiers Gnaw have announced they’ll return Oct. 15 with a new full-length. Horrible Chamber — which I can only assume is what it feels like you’re trapped inside while you’re listening, because, seriously, Gnaw are fucked up sounding — will serve as the band’s Seventh Rule Recordings debut and as the follow-up to 2009’s This Face (review here), the screams of which one can still hear in the middle of the night if one pays close enough attention.

No cult posturing, but all the terror. The PR wire sends sound and vision:

GNAW: NYC Noise Merchants Unleash Album Details; Teaser Video Posted

New York’s favorite malignant noise instigators and recent Seventh Rule signees, GNAW, will unleash the diseased fruit of their sonic discontent this October. GNAW is the maniacal anti-creation of Alan Dubin (Khanate, Old, O.L.D.), Carter Thornton (Enos Slaughter), Jun Mizumachi (Ike Yard), Brian Beatrice and Eric Neuser. Together they’ve manifested a terrifyingly claustrophobic, seven-track journey of sound where the collective sentiments of fear, trauma, rage and repugnance collide into a cathartic state of brooding, audio disease. Fittingly titled, Horrible Chamber, the follow-up to 2009’s This Face, was recorded at Seizures Palace by Jason LaFarge (Swans, Akron/Family, Khanate, Angels Of Light) and mixed by Brian Beatrice at audioEngine and mastered by James Plotkin (OLD, Scorn, Khanate, Khlyst etc), with additional elements recorded by Beatrice, Dubin, Thornton, and Mizumachi in various chambers.

Comments the band in a distant shriek: “We are thrilled that Seventh Rule is about to unleash Horrible Chamber upon the masses. We have been working hard creating an extremely unique record that will make people feel ecstatic about feeling bad.”

Horrible Chamber will be unleashed via Seventh Rule Recordings on October 15 2013. Preorder details to be unveiled in the coming weeks.

Horrible Chamber Track Listing:
1. Humming
2. Of Embers
3. Water Rite
4. Worm
5. Widowkeeper
6. Vulture
7. This Horrible Chamber

GNAW will bring their scathing odes to the stage later this month with two tri-state area shows with additional live rituals to be announced shortly.

GNAW Live:
8/23/2013Stanhope House – Stanhope, NJ w/ Prana Bindu, Sonic Suicide Squad, Capacities, Ubasute
8/25/2013 Saint Vitus – Brooklyn, NY w/ Wehrmacht, Prime Evil, Undivided, Vermefug, Thrash Or Die

http://www.facebook.com/Gnawtheband
http://www.seventhrule.com

Gnaw, Horrible Chamber album trailer

For anyone in or around Manhattan tonight, Tersdee, May 6, Tones of Death is putting on a free show at Fontana’s — it’s like the pancake breakfast; they do it every month — which features NYC horror metallers Gnaw, the ever-doomed Sin of Angels and Bubonic Bear, whom I’ve never heard of but rule solely based on the name. Gnaw are also working on a new album to follow up their first outing, This Face, which still gives me periodic nightmares. The PR wire says dig it:

This month’s installment of Fontana‘s free Tones of Death metal night takes place this Thursday, May 6th, headlined by audio nihilists Gnaw. Free PBR will be served until it runs out.

Gnaw Live Terror:

5/06/2010 Fontana‘s – New York, NY w/ Sin of Angels, Bubonic Bear

Gnaw is the sawblade-wrapped-in-razorwire brainchild of Alan Dubin (Khanate, OLD), Carter Thornton (Enos Slaughter), Jun Mizumachi (Ike Yard), and Jamie Sykes (Thorr’s Hammer, Burning Witch). Their 2009 debut for Conspiracy Records This Face was further infected and finally delivered by engineer Brian Beatrice before being wrought for stage deployment with additional drummer Eric Neuser. Their attack has been described as a “genre destroying journey” and utilizes pounding percussion, factory noise, chordal slabs of guitar and bass and homemade electro-acoustic contraptions. Dubin’s unique and legendary shriek delivers vivid portrayals of all things bad.

The NYC-based unit have been working in the shadows, constructing their diabolical follow-up to This Face. More info on this ongoing auditory terror campaign will be available soon, as well as dates for a Gnaw European assault in the works for October.

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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