By: James Matthews
CHICAGO – Weird industrial shrieks, quivering shouts, and pulsating rhythms defined a night of art-rocking madness on Sunday, May 4th as NYC based experimental rock band, YHWH Nailgun, brought their recently released debut album “45 Pounds” to life at Sleeping Village.
YHWH Nailgun (pronounced ‘Yahweh Nailgun’) formed in 2020 as a union between vocalist Zack Borzone and drummer Sam Pickard. The duo moved to New York together, where they added Saguiv Rosenstock and Jack Tobias. Over the 5 years, their sound has evolved from post-industrial clatter to a righteous synthesis of hardcore, industrial, and funk.
Rosenstock, guitarist and the band’s resident producer, used just about every millimeter of his guitar strings on Sunday night, from the bridge up to the headstock. He was getting sounds out of his amp that sounded like a new language: harmonics bright as the sun, metallic software-glitching blurts, and a tone reminiscent of a steelpan.
Pickard, who reminds me of Zach Hill if he was from Williamsburg, plays with an amount of poise that would make it entirely appropriate to position the drum kit in the front-center of the stage. His laser focused grooves and thunderous fills not only glue together the otherwise disparate instrumentation, but deliver urgency in a way that very few drummers are capable of.
Speaking of urgency, frontman Zack Borzone sings like he’s in the midst of being kidnapped. Squealing and gasping in ways that sound like he’s being tortured by some internal spirit, Borzone moves in a way that is gracefully repulsive. Standing front and center, he paces the stage like he’s doing morse code with his feet. Borzones’s bodily contortions, squirms, and shrieks make his stage presence impressively memorable. It is rare to see a frontman (at least in the somewhat insular bubble of Chicago guitar rock that I reside in) that is capable of demanding attention visually.
It’s very easy to not pay attention to things these days, but YHWH Nailgun demanded mine for the entirety of their set. Not a moment of the set felt shabby or boring. It wasn’t the enthralling and cathartic energy of their act that really stood out to me though: it was the pauses, the lulls, and the brief moments of silence. Where many contemporaneous bands spend loads of time on stage making uncomfortable small-talk with the audience or manipulating their guitars to Sonic Youth tunings in useless silence, YHWH makes every second of their act feel like what it’s supposed to be. A performance. Not a compilation of songs played in succession, but a spectacle where every second is accounted for, prepared for, and duly respected. The silence felt incredibly intentional. Every lull, every moment that Borzone would step away from the mic, he was stepping somewhere else. With closed eyes. And it felt like in these moments, the audience was stepping there with him.
###