Review: YHWH Nailgun @ The Middle East 4/12
Photo credits: Ben Turok
Review by Miguel Gonzales
A Saturday evening outing should never feel nasty. It was barely raining, yet the sputtering droplets from the wind made Central Square disgusting to walk through. The number of people wearing heavy workwear jackets and windbreakers rustling through the busy foot traffic and waiting at The Middle East felt the same way. The early birds were lucky enough to wait inside the Middle East’s dine-in restaurant; however, the line gradually became longer, and the unfortunate ones had to wait outside. We got over it as everyone aired their frustrations out about the climate in the moment, and let it all out for the sputtering, explosive headliner YHWH Nailgun.
The buzzed-about hype for YHWH Nailgun feels real. They’re talked about as the best new band, the coolest band out right now, or the most exciting band as of recent years, but YHWH Nailgun have been active for a good minute. The New York-based four-piece experimentalists formed in Philadelphia during COVID, releasing a few loose singles in 2020 and two self-released EPs in 2022. Once a duo consisting of vocalist Zack Borzone and Godcaster drummer Sam Pickard, synth player Jack Tobia,s and guitarist Saguiv Rosenstock joined the roster when the duo made the move to New York. Signing to the ever-eclectic London-based label AD 93, their exhilarating debut album “45 Pounds” marks the quartet as a force to be reckoned with.
Their character is impossible to pin down, as much as there is a need to draw comparisons to other bands in vain — the technical math-rock of Battles, the feral and untamed sounds of US Maple, and the despondent, claustrophobic atmosphere of Calgary indie rockers Women. YHWH Nailgun is incorporeal in spirit and sporadic in nature. Not only is it expressed in their music, but deeply rooted within their set as well.
Opening for YHWH Nailgun around 8:30 p.m. was the Providence-based avant-pop trio babybaby_explores, who were so fun to see. The trio fearlessly embalm themselves in DIY weirdness for thirty minutes from their songs, their stage presence, and their clothing as well. Guitarist Sam M-H, in particular, wore customized air-sprayed white cargo Wranglers, along with a hooded top ripped straight from a grey hoodie and a green embezzled Juicy Couture hat with a thrashed bill. Sam M-H also had some woozy guitar tones, which reminded me of the indie surf rock sound from the early 2010s — just emulsified and warbled down where it makes you feel like you’re stuck in the uncanny valley.
Lids B-Day’s vocals are heavily modulated, just as much as Sam B-H’s guitars. As B-Day maneuvers around in an animated manner and gestures robotically on-stage, she sings and talks either with a crazy amount of pitch shift or a disorienting amount of delay to the point where B-Day sounds unintelligible and garbled. Ramone Cano-Daly, the keys and rhythm player, lays down the beat for their already bizarre pop tunes. As Cano-Daly intentionally presses down on her sampler, the programmed drums either boom through the speakers or clash.
babybaby_explores are unapologetically scrappy and sporadic, which puts everyone in a good mood. One of the audience members off to the side, yelped in a drunken slur about one of their friends miserably doing the Macarena. Everyone hears them, including B-Day and Cano-Daly, who hit the Macarena together.
“One time I heard some guy at a stoplight listening to the Macarena by himself in the car. That is a choice someone can make,” B-Day said.
YHWH Nailgun started a few minutes early, around 9:25 p.m., entering on the side of the stage. The quartet gets settled: Pickard sits in front of his drum setup gripping his drumsticks in his hand, Tobias stands on the far right near his synth boards, and Rosenstock tunes his guitar and checks his pedals on the other side. A wall of eerie drones emanates from Rosenstock’s guitar, while Borzone needs to stretch. Borzone’s neck violently jolts to the right, his arms flailing back and eyes closed. He puts his Timberland boots on top of a monitor speaker, stretching both of his legs.
It got a lot more animalistic when “Penetrator” opened their set — a gnarling, muscular song that disgustingly twists and spins in different directions. Pickard’s pounding rhythms, Tobias’ blistering synth, and Rosenstock’s sweeping guitar strikes forcefully from the soundsystem. Their set kept moving along at such a fast pace with barely any breaks. I felt like they were hanging from the sky at a high elevation, driving in full-throttle and ascending, where the band was eerily nondescript. Their forty-minute set was a kinetic gauntlet compact with luminous short bursts charged with bestial sounds and a primal attitude.
Borzone was at the forefront of all their controlled chaos, straight-up going ham. Borzone’s guttural vocals weep and shriek, and his wispy enunciating creeks and croaks. On occasion, he clicks his tongue or lets out a “yuh” after the end of a song that sounds like his tongue is lodged in his throat. Borzone’s jittery mannerisms on stage were even crazier, maintaining a balance in being spontaneously frenzied and feverishly controlled. He shakes his arms and legs around in an uncontrollable state, wraps his grey sweatshirt around himself like a straitjacket during “Castrato Raw (Fullback),” and gets a bit sturdy too. He wasn’t like this for a few songs. It was for the entire set.
The rest of the band enhances Borzone’s unhinged stride. Rosenstock’s guitar tones are disembodied and reach toward the stars, as he is surrounded by a myriad of pedals that heavily manipulate how his guitar sounds. Rosenstock is clearly playing a guitar, but his guitar doesn’t sound like a guitar at all. Rosenstock has his foot on a Crybaby Wah effect pedal throughout the set, but a variety of active pedals enmesh themselves so much that it feels like the guitar is stretching itself out on the menacing soundscape. Tobias’ synth playing on top of Rosenstock’s guitars is oddly calamative, but intense when it needs to be. The hammering drum lines on “Fountain Pain” and the floating synth passages on “Blackout” establish the variety Tobias offers, but both sound enormous in their own way.
Pickard’s drum playing took the spotlight for me and others, who is truly the heart of the band’s songs. His drum setup is not too complicated: there’s one floor tom, one bass drum, one snare, and hi-hats. One large crash cymbal dangles from its stand in damaged condition, as the long sliver of the cymbal faces outwards. Pickard’s setup also includes rototoms, which play a major role in why the drums sound dynamic and purposefully cathartic. His rototom fills clash and explode in your ears, the shattered cymbal crashes and sounds warped beyond repair, and the bass drum deliberately thumps like an anvil. Damon Krukowski of the Boston-based dream pop band Galaxie 500 was in attendance at the concert, noticing that he barely touched his cymbal. Pickard chooses to ride on his floor tom instead of the cymbal for certain songs. It not only shows his technical chops and how meticulously detailed Pickard is as a drummer, but also highlights him as a star-studded talent who can effortlessly snarl up some ferocious rhythms.
A swarm of young kids and college students pushed around each other left and right in the front, while the crowd on the sidelines and very back stood in amazement. After their set ended from a surprise one-song encore, I was under a strong euphoric daze, surprised to learn it was 10:05 p.m. You can’t help but be captivated by YHWH Nailgun’s disembodied, almost-spiritualistic performance filled with too many electrifying moments. When you inevitably lose track of time at a YHWH Nailgun show, you might as well say you’re lost in the speed of light with them as well.