Album Of The Week: YHWH Nailgun 45 Pounds

Let’s just get this out of the way first: YHWH Nailgun is not a rapper. Those abbreviated letters don’t pledge allegiance to any hip-hop collective. "YHWH" is pronounced "Yahweh," as in God in the Hebrew Bible, and YHWH Nailgun are four guys. The oddball noise-rock band don't make a lot of explicit deity references on their debut album 45 Pounds, out this Friday. But vocalist Zack Borzone’s lyrics occasionally toy with references to higher powers: "I feel like the king of the sky/ Watch me choke this sad demon from behind."

Like a lot of bands, YHWH Nailgun formed in the thick of 2020, as a drum-and-vocals project between Borzone and drummer Sam Pickard in Philadelphia. After moving to New York together, they brought in keyboardist Jack Tobias and guitarist Saguiv Rosenstock. Their earliest releases on Bandcamp were steeped in post-industrial distortion, a bellowing electronic cacophony often eclipsing Borzone's voice.

As their lineup expanded into a quartet, their sound tilted more towards a punk sound that seemed to align with their contrarian ethos — think of truly genre-agnostic records like Xiu Xiu’s Fabulous Muscles, a personal favorite of Borzone. Repelled by the seemingly paint-by-numbers formula of popular indie rock released throughout the late 2010s, YHWH Nailgun used the unanimous re-awakening of the 2020s to their advantage: "What had been happening for years was feeling almost terminally ill -— like a collapse around certain cultural touchstones, and attitudes about music and how it should be made," Pickard told Crack. "I remember thinking: What would I like to see instead of this bullshit?"

And yet, at this exact moment, YHWH Nailgun might be the buzziest band in New York’s outer boroughs. They’re a bit too outlandish to get slapped with a "scenester" label, but they’ve accrued the type of niche, hyper-local audience — of whom many live, say, near the Bushwick-Ridgewood border — that a lot of scenesters would kill for. What YHWH Nailgun have achieved so far up to 45 Pounds is evidence that going against the grain can often point you towards communities aspiring to a similar, less-traveled path.

45 Pounds is risky and off-putting. Across its 10 songs are no familiar pop song structures, and its “hooks” more often come from a drum machine rather than in a melody; songs like "Animal Death Already Breathing" builds off the sound of tropical steel drums as Borzone imagines himself as something like a destroying angel. Drums are regularly as loud, if not louder than vocals in these mixes, the two playing off each other as equivalents. Borzone — who cites left-of-center poets like Frank Stanford, Paul Celan, and Walt Whitman as some of his biggest lyrical influences — doesn’t sing over those drums as much as he shouts, with a melodrama like he’s desperate for anyone and everyone to hear him. He regularly speaks in jumbled stanzas: "Barricaded eyes touch me when I weep/ Jumping on the bed unseen/ Still shiver when I’m unclean," he muses over the skittering hi-hats of "Iron Feet." In the right headspace, these tracks feel more like an oracle than a song.

45 Pounds is an LP’s worth of ambition packed into an EP’s length at 21 minutes; much longer than that and it’d likely grow exhausting. But in its short blast, 45 Pounds is somehow both disquieting and a breath of fresh air. You don’t have to understand Borzone’s lofty refrains to sense the record’s haunting, lingering nature, especially on songs like the jungle-dance groove "Castrato Raw (Fullback)," which takes its name from the ancient procedure of castrating a prepubescent male opera singer to preserve their higher register. And yet, in spite of all its chaos, cynicism, and capriciousness, it’s heartening to know there are artists out here making projects as daring as 45 Pounds, who are transgressive for reasons beyond transgression’s sake. Rock’s not dead; YHWH Nailgun are resurrecting it.

45 Pounds is out 3/21 via AD 93/Many Hats.

YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds [LP]

23.99

Amazon

Other albums of note out this week:
• Japanese Breakfast's For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)
• Weatherday's Hornet Disaster
• Saba & NO ID's From The Private Collection Of Saba And No ID
• Men I Trust's Equus Asinus
• The Horrors' Night Life
• My Morning Jacket's is
• Flying Lotus' ASH Soundtrack
• Young Widows' Power Sucker
• Tamino's Every Dawn's A Mountain
• Lola Kirke's Trailblazer
• Bathe's Inside Voice(s)
• Phil Cook's Appalachia Borealis
• Graham Reynolds' Mountain
• Dutch Interior's Moneyball
• Ora The Molecule's Dance Therapy
• Welly's Big In The Suburbs
• Gnod & White Hills's Drop Out III
• Greentea Peng's Tell Dem It's Sunny
• James Arthur's Pisces
• Lordi's Limited Deadition
• Old Mervs' Old Mervs
• Deacon Blue's The Great Western Road
• Annie And The Caldwells' Can’t Lose My (Soul)
• XIXA's XOLO
• Macie Stewart's When The Distance Is Blue
• SpiritWorld's Helldorado
• The Taxpayers' Circle Breaker
• The Infinity Ring's Ataraxia
• John Splithoff's From From Here
• Jeffrey Lewis' The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis
• Kinky Friedman's Poet Of Motel 6
• Ebba Åsman's When You Know
• Eliza Niemi's Progress Bakery
• Bobby Rush & Kenny Wayne Shepherd's Young Fashioned Ways
• Imperial Triumphant's Goldstar
• Gates To Hell's Death Comes To All
• Lonnie Holley's Tonky
• Nick Storring's Mirante
• Ed Kuepper & Jim White's After The Flood
• Brock Geiger's Some Nights
• Cradle Of Filth's The Screaming Of The Valkyries
• Goya Gumbani's Warlord Of The Weejuns
• Jaco Jaco's Gremlin
• Floodlights' Underneath
• Amine Laje's Datsha
• Dead Bars' All Dead Bars Go To Heaven
• Lucy Liyou's Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name
• Cross Record's Crush Me
• Annie & The Caldwells' Can’t Lose My (Soul)
• Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Gift Songs
• Kinlaw's gut ccheck
• Mountaintop Junkshop's Misadventureland
• Pictoria Vark's Nothing Sticks
• KATLA's Scandinavian Pain
• Glazyhaze's Sonic
• Molto Ohm's FEED
• Desire's Games People Play
• Greer's Big Smile
• Puñal's Buscando La Muerte
• Crossed's Realismo Ausente
• PremRock's Did You Enjoy Your Time Here…?
• David Ramirez’s All The Not So Gentle Reminders
• Ok Cowgirl's Couldn't Save Us From My Gut (Deluxe)
• Nico Paulo's Interval_o
• Aaryan Shah's Do You See The Birds, Too?
• Bloodywood's Nu Delhi
• Hiroshi Yoshimura's Flora
• Jenny Haniver's Unsolved Mysterious EP
• Sensor Ghost's Irritation On Demand
• Utena Kobayashi & Motion Graphics' Glossolalia EP
• Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith's Defiant Life
• Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco’s I Said I Love You First
• Motorbike's Kick It Over
• Brian D'Addario's Till The Morning
• Various Artists' Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco: Dancefloor Seductions From Italian Sexploitation Cinema
• Traumer's Datsha
• Ghost Hounds' Almost Home
• Christian Larumbe's Refugio
• Corpus Offal's Corpus Offal
• De La Soul's The Grind Date 20th Anniversary Edition
• more eaze & claire rousay's No Floor EP
• Lily Meola's Postcards To Heaven EP
• Jessica Simpson's Nashville Canyon EP
• Tauren Wells' Let The Church Sing EP
• Dead Groove's Rubicon EP
• B.U.G Antman's Y'all Ugly EP
• Tommy Emmanuel's Live At The Sydney Opera House
• Jeremy Bradley Earl's Four Songs EP
• Astronaut Pushers' Fires Of Love EP
• Cloe Wilder's Life's A Bitch EP
• Tanner Dane's Cut Me Loose EP
• TRÍADA's De Versiones y Alma EP
• Rush's Rush 50 Box Set
• The Orchestra (For Now)'s Plan 75 EP