Gouge Away’s new album is a resurrection. Since forming in Citadel Lauderdale within the early 2010s, the quartet has generated throat-mulching noise rock and shattered fragments of hardcore, imbuing each and every notice with an depth that felt impressively unsustainable—just like the sound of a band destined to burn out and implode faster fairly than later. Their first album was once titled , Dies, like a clause within the headline of a newspaper obituary: It looked as if it would counsel they had been doomed from the beginning.
When the onset of the pandemic compelled the band to pause writing its 3rd album, Deep Sage, the gloomy prophecy just about got here true. Vocalist Christina Michelle stepped again from the band to “center of attention on [her] private lifestyles” and moved to Portland, Oregon. Different bandmates departed Florida for various portions of the rustic and started to simply accept that their songs-in-progress may by no means see the sunshine of day.
However as time handed, absence and distance papered over previous disagreements and Gouge Away discovered that they neglected each and every different. In 2022, they revisited the dormant mission with contemporary eyes—keen once more to make one thing that felt new. The ensuing songs are daringly restrained for a band very best recognized for its frayed feelings and unrelenting extremity. Those qualities are found in Deep Sage, however the brand new album additionally shows hanging contrasts, embracing moderately softer, melodic sounds—gravity-defying shoegaze, gloomy grunge—along the pressing post-hardcore refractions Gouge Away have presented since their earliest days.
Their 2018 document Burnt Sugar—recorded with Jeremy Bolm (of Touché Amoré) and Jack Shirley (who’s produced for Deafheaven, Loma Prieta, and extra)—represented the band’s first try to weave those extra sedate sounds into determined, distressed songs. Deep Sage, recorded once more with Shirley, digs deeper to discover sounds that earlier paintings most effective hinted at. There are songs like “Idealized,” the place the melodies wriggle and squirm just like the off-balance ’90s post-hardcore accumulated in Numero Staff field units. The stumbling, blistering “Newtau” recollects the labyrinthine riffs of David Pajo, if he had been recording in an lively blast furnace. Nearer “Dallas,” a loving tribute to a misplaced pal, churns throughout the foamy melodies of lower-fi shoegaze, permitting area for Michelle’s voice to fall to a gentle hush as an alternative of her standard pinched scream.
When heavy bands department out, it on occasion comes on the expense in their earlier crushing chaos, however Gouge Away pursue new instructions basically in provider of accelerating their general depth. After they release into the seasick hardcore riffs of “Spaced Out” or the queasy AmRep fuzz of “The Polishing” (which options a few of Michelle’s maximum unsettled vocals throughout any of the bands’ data thus far) the affect is felt extra at once as a result of the quieter moments: Each and every of Michelle’s shredded screams arrives with the hair-raising jolt of a leap scare. It is a new trick for Gouge Away, and an efficient one—they power you to let your guard down for a second, after which they shove your face immediately again into the concrete.
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