YHWH Nailgun - Magazine

4AD

YHWH Nailgun gathered a lot of attentive ears with the release of their debut 45 Pounds last year. And rightly so; they've tapped into a specific lane of necessary weirdness. This is that forward thinking shit that attentive ears fish for. 

"Ghost of Love" opens up the psychotic spheres of Magazine. The industrial sound palettes that we were familiarised with on 45 Pounds are back: oozing soundscapes; throbbing apprehension; catatonic patterns; warping and waning walls of grease-drizzled mechanical antics. Vocals squeezed through a swollen throat. Instrumentals squashed under a 100-tonne rolling press. Drumkits walking up and down a set of awkwardly spaced and placed steps. Skin grafts gone wrong. Dancing elegantly on broken glass. Reving up a treacle-filled engine. A quick dip of your balls in boiling water. Mental psoriasis. Flaky consciousness. Lights on and off all day long. De-evolution. Limbs getting shorter and shorter, back to nothing but potential nodes - someday useful facets of a system. The campfire's taken a funny turn. The community seem to have found a new means of communication - phonetic grunts not far from words, similar enough to resonate; not similar enough enough so to jar. Left in an uncertain space. Undecipherable; hieroglyphic living. Tardis' to be unpacked - simple undertakings made infinite on further inspection.

11-minutes, and yet more dense with ideas than some 2-hour drivel fests. It's not about the length, lads. Saying that, I would still like another 20-or-so-minutes of it though. It's hard to really grasp hold of ephemeralities - it's like clutching at creative straws; by the time you've grasped the idea, it's moved on.

The title track, at a whopping 35-seconds in length, just....ends. No rhyme or reason. It's hard to find a rhyme or reason for experimental things other than Why not? Push the boat and see where it sails to. Beginning on "Ghost of Love" and ending on "To the Devil" 11-minutes later, Magazine churns you through transient states.