��Finally back in stock, on both digipack CD and a highly limited gatefold LP (the latter of which unfortunately lacks two of the tracks found on the CD version presumably due to space restrictions, but it does come with a digital download code for the entire album in full).

�� This Face was the 2009 debut album of experimental sludge horror from Gnaw, a formidable NYC based outfit that features vocalist Alan Dubin (Khanate, OLD), drummer Jamie Sykes (Burning Witch, Atavist, Thorr's Hammer), bassist / guitarist / pianist Carter Thornton (Enos Slaughter), sound designer / composer Brian Beatrice, and noise sculptor Jun Mizumachi (Ike Yard). On their debut, the band produces a nightmare vision of broken industrial music, demonic and discordant sludge metal, strange electronic soundscapes and some of the most harrowing use of field recordings this side of a Randy Yau CD. Fans of Dubin's previous band Khanate were already acclimated to the depths of disturbing lyrical themes, transgressive images and extreme sonic abuse that he was capable of delving into, but even the hardiest fan of extreme doom was no doubt taken aback by the sheer grueling horror that seemed to ooze from the pores of This Face.

�� Opening with "Haven Vault", the band comes tumbling out of the speakers in a confusion of gnarled guitar noise, erratic free-improv-style drumming and creepy dissonant piano, with Dubin's horrific anguished witch-shriek piercing the fetid atmosphere; almost from the start, the band's sound is only barely clinging to the remnants of heavy metal, even if this malformed industrial-doom is some of the heaviest shit that you're likely to hear. The abject depravity of Dubin's lyrics adds to the suffocating atmosphere conjured from the clatter and roar of Gnaw's freeform collapse, the music sounding more like a supercharged PCP-fueled version of European improvisational ensemble AMM at times than the sort of oxygen-devouring doom that some of these guys were doing in Khanate and Burning Witch. That is, until "Vacant" kicks in. It is here that Gnaw's sickeningly mutant doom metal comes into sharp focus, a sinister guitar riff ascending over the volcanic bass and eruptions of electronic noise, the drummer pounding out an angular, off-kilter beat amid squalls of ear-shredding electronic abuse that scream through the track, while Dubin's vocals shift schizophrenically between that heavily processed, manipulated ghastly scream and a weird, robotic croon. I've always dug Dubin's unique, unbalanced vocal style in his other bands, but his work on Gnaw's debut comprise some of the wildest vocals I've heard out of a "doom" metal band this side of Yob. The music, however, is utterly fucked-up, the grinding metallic guitars often dropping out to be replaced by blasts of corrosive rhythmic noise or rumbling ultra-blown-out bass, the drummer constantly veering from rolling tribal rhythms to jagged time signature changes to blasts of freely improvised rhythmic chaos. Many moments on This Face have that demented free-jazz feel, like some improv rhythm section whipping up a violent percussive storm beneath maelstroms of raging Rita-like harsh noise, or slipping into Test Dept.-like sheet metal pummel, or transforming into glitch-infested hypno-metal spasms, like on the strangely hypnotic "Feelers". Elsewhere on "Backyard Frontier", the band blends creepy environmental recordings and acoustic noise with churning tribal drums and screeching blackened horror, and "Watcher"'s brain damaged gutter blues stumbles through dense fields of cracked electronics and heavily layered and processed vocal noise. And on from there: from the fractured doom of "Ghosted", the droning sludge-soaked pummel of "Shard", and the smoldering black ambience and murderous ravings of "BYF (Reprise)", Gnaw construct an oppressive, surreal atmosphere rife with unutterable depths of psychic suffering.