Because things have been discouragingly slow around here this week, and because it’s pissing-rain miserable outside, I’ve decided to cap off the week with Khanate, who, during their time together, were likewise slow and miserable. Enjoy the above shortened version of “Dead” from the 2003 Things Viral album, complete with the visual accompaniment of a dude blowing his brains out.

Spring break has come not a moment too soon.

Thanks to the few and proud who did stop by the site this week, most notably the debaters going back and forth on the Moth Eater live review — for the record, I’m a fan — but also to everyone else who did and didn’t comment on the various happenings.

As alluded above, I’m on break next week from my writing program at Rutgers. I have school work to catch up on, but Monday I’ll be posting my interview with Bobby Liebling of Pentagram, so please, look forward to that. Also in the can and coming up in the next couple weeks are chats with Erik Larson about his new band Might Could, former Amorphis bassist Olli-Pekka “Oppu” Laine (he was in the band when they ruled) about his prog-death project Barren Earth and, conducted this very afternoon, a brief check-in with Matt Pike from High on Fire, who despite a crappy phone connection was as pleasant and accommodating as ever. There’ll be more, as well. There always is.

If you’re in Jersey this weekend, I’ll be throwing down tomorrow night (March 13) with my good friends in Clamfight and Rukut at The Saint in Asbury Park, and I’m sure we’d all love it if you stopped by.

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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