Gnaw Their Tongues – Abyss of Longing Throats (Crucial Blast Records)

Tuesday, 20th October 2015 By Daniel Keating

Rating: 8/10

Gnaw Their Tongues is a one-man mindfuck out of the Netherlands, creating a sick brew of experimental, industrialized black metal which is both challenging and affective. Mories, the architect of this madness has been at GTT since 2005, and now releases the project’s eighth album. Eight albums in ten years is a pretty insane pace for any musical project, and this is pretty insane music at hand – so on the demented/prolific matrix, GTT is near the front of the line.

Abyss of Longing Throats is the soundtrack to a cinematic, psychopathic nightmare. Not literally speaking of course, but that’s what it feels like. Does anyone else get the “sex dungeon in the basement of the rendering plant” feeling from this one, or is it just me? Well then. Mories creates the GTT experience by way of electronics, samples, guitars, keys, drums, myriad effects, and other studio magic to convey potent, doomy and sinister avant garde black metal.

After making it through the first two songs (“songs” used loosely, perhaps they should be called “experiences”) on track three’s “Abyss of Longing Throats” a more straight-ahead, “normal” kind of song exists. Here is some briskly quick, industrial-tinged black metal with atmosphere akin to a Leviathan release (potent and melancholically melodic). Perhaps the sound could be approximated by a Leviathan and Anaal Nathrakh combination.

Despite some good use of melody there, and in such areas as the choral parts on “Through Flesh”, the melodic angle of the album tends to get buried by the charred wreckage of sounds that otherwise comprise the songs. In all, a wholly unsettling collection of sounds to bring down anyone’s mood and add some seasonal despair and bone-chilling conjurations of death and insanity to an otherwise cheerful Halloween season. This is one of those albums where wildly-varying rating scores would come at little surprise. Some may hear brilliance, while others mostly noise. I hear more of the former, yet at the same time don’t hear an album that’s gonna be something to revisit much. But I think that’s the nature of the beast here. What say you?