Picking up where 2008's An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood left off, GNAW THEIR TONGUES is back with nine new tracks of fearsome blackened orchestral chaos and abstract horror that still sounds like little else out there. On Dread, we're feeling an even heavier bass-assault compared to the other releases, and this is easily the heaviest GNAW THEIR TONGUES release yet. This monstrous, noxious bottom-end roar that skulks and slithers throughout the album suggests a foul fusion of Abruptum (which is still the closest reference point to GNAW THEIR TONGUE's black chaos) and Leonard Rosenman's most nightmarish film scores, piled in towering heaps of sadistic noise, warped orchestral strings, degraded samples, shrieking voices, and punishing lurching doom draped in suffocating atrmosphere. Hyper-abstract black metal sound-collage? Wagnerian avant-doom psychosis? That's one way of putting it, but GNAW THEIR TONGUES is ultimately impossible to pin down, defying simple categorization as this album plunges even deeper into a black pit of total cinematic horror, sexual perversion, and shapeless heaviosity.
Review
It's refreshing to see that someone could produce something so original, ugly and violent without hitting the pitfalls of the current black metal scene. For this reason Gnaw Their Tongues is an important fixture in modern black metal and will likely continue to produce the utmost in horrific filth. Fans of the unhinged filth of Abruptum or the improvisational black noise of Stalaggh should likely enjoy this insanity. Fans of all forms of sludgy plodding, be it the early heavy forms of "industrial" such as Swans or Fall of Because, or the sludge doom of the 90s may appreciate the super heavy distorted bass and pounding drums found here. - Metal Archives 4/5
