Pandemoniac Poetry
During Rewire, an alternative music festival based in Den Haag that promotes the upper echelons of underground music, I had the pleasure of seeing YHWH Nailgun at the culture centre Concordia. This tiny venue is a humble one; it sports a modest interior with white balustrades bordering the grey abyss below. Harsh white light illuminates excited faces—a stark contrast to the usual dimly lit purple or orange lighting previously encountered that day. The venue never stood a chance to contain the controlled chaos birthed by YHWH Nailgun.
YHWH Nailgun was born in Philadelphia in 2020 thanks to the shared psychosis of the pandemic. Zach Borzone (vocals) and Sam Pickard (drummer) came together to make music and self-released an EP. Later, they relocated to New York City, adding Jack Tobias (keyboard) and Saguiv Rosenstock (guitar) to their lineup. The band released their debut album this year under the London-based label AD93. They are jJoined by alternative contemporary greats such as Moin and Joanne Robbertson.
Your attention is immediately drawn to the drummer, Sam Pickard. Many Hindu deities meddle with mere mortals, but I haven't heard of one starting a band. His kit includes a set of rototoms, a shell-less drum that changes its pitch by rotating around a metal string, adding a more melodic sound to the percussion. Rototoms have a sharp-pitched sound lacking oomph; their industrial sound perfectly captures the technicality of Pickard's methodical hammering.
Saguiv Rosenstock, the lead guitarist and producer of the crew, creates sounds that shouldn't be coming from a guitar and bends his strings so hard that the singer bends with them. Blended with the synthesisers by Jack Tobias, they create textured sounds that are joined seamlessly. A sensual, intimate relationship, unable to distinguish where the guitars end and where the synth begins. They create sounds that sound like scenes from your favourite horror film, using samples of the pained breathing of an animal or machine gun fire. Harsh, sharp and industrial.
Floating from above, Zach Borzone recites poetry. He seems to tap into a frequency the rest of us are incapable of, and turns into an acoustic force of nature. Raw and emotional. Zach admitted in an interview that he created a persona to be truly free in his self-expression, quoting 'give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth' from Oscar Wilde. To the unfamiliar, it might seem that there’s something severely broken or off with the singer. The persona fits perfectly with the sound of the band and is reminiscent of the psychopathic stare of Dara Kiely of Girl Band and the intangibility of MC Ride.
Borzone's lyrics are poetic, fragmented, raw – mixing repressed sexual themes with political commentary. Skirting the lines between the two. Recurring themes are angel's wings or flying and touch. The opening track on 45 Pounds is called Penetrator and contains the following lyrics:
'Come and see
How I push my
Shovel deep-deep-deep-deep-deep
Mama weep
Watch me move, I'm
Like a god'
In an interview with I-D, Zach cited Paul Celan and Walt Whitman as his main inspirations. It's easy to recognise Celan's work in Borzone's lyrics. The fragmented and post-modernist style, describing the raw unfiltered horrors of the holocaust.
'Tear pusher
I feel like the king of the sky
Tear pusher
I feel like a Russian plane
Part of the beauty of their sound comes from the brevity. Their debut album, 45 Pounds, is just 21 minutes long while spanning 10 songs. In an interview, Rosenstock explains that they enjoy brevity and clarity. They strive to convey their ideas in a small amount of time. Borzone adds to this, saying that he likes to condense and harmonise things that have never been harmonised before, making it really hard and overwhelming.
The band describe themselves as trying to do something that feels meaningful, and are actively trying to distance themselves from what's going on in the contemporary NYC indie scene. 'There's nothing to do but try to be contemporary.' – Borzone, Pickard describes it as '80% of bands these days are cosplaying. ' Even going as far as to say they are openly defiant of the late 2010s indie rock scene, describing it as bullshit: "that whole ten-degrees-of-irony thing always rubbed me up the wrong way". Their creative process stems from the need to express the same emotions, but these emotions remain ineffable.
Go see for yourself: YHWH Nailgun will be performing the 7th of November in Tivoli as part of the Le Guess Who? festival. Summarising, YHWH Nailgun consists of incredible texturing of guitars and synths with the polyrhythmic droning - only a four-armed person should be capable of, including poetic and raw vocals. The only thing stronger than the raw emotion conveyed by their sound is the anticipation of what comes next.