Review: Gnaw Their Tongues ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’

There’s a little part of the brain that wonders if now is the right time for Gnaw Their Tongues. It’s chaos out there; people are feeling claustrophobic, paranoia is rife and to many it really feels like the end times are upon us – basically, it’s Maurice De Jong’s whole raison d’etre writ large so is another barrage of blackened misanthropy really necessary? It probably isn’t the healthiest idea to re-immerse one’s psyche in his world but then again, there’s always been a masochistic streak in anyone who’s followed him thus far, so let’s be honest, we’re going to lap this up.

Gnaw Their Tongues ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’

As with much of Gnaw Their Tongues’ output, especially of late, it dwells most comfortably in the extremes, hitting the unwary early on with a wall of sound that feels like walking headfirst into a swarm of biomechanical locusts, a torrent of fried malevolence that sets the scene well for Mories’ manic screams.

In Mories’ voice, though, there is infinite expression for torment, his subtle shifts in tone and volume registering more as psychic rollercoaster than audio wobble. Perhaps the most intense moment in recent Gnaw Their Tongues-addled-memory comes in White Void Black Wounds, an uncompromising four minutes that draws upon Mories’ love of lo-fi black metal, power electronics, dystopian samples and unhinged fury that simply refuses to give an inch

If the full album were of its ilk, the impact would be lost, but given that it prefaces To Rival Death In Beauty, an eerily beautiful work of cinematic industrialism that feels like a doomsday sermon delivered by a barbiturate-addled preacher, it stands as a searing centrepiece from which the album can draw its energy and spite.

With his latest collection, Mories has once again tapped into utter hopelessness and vomited forth a terrible, beautiful and disturbing work of art.

A Sombre Gesture In The Faint Light Of Dusk taps into the eerie minimalism of To Rival Death… yet strips it of any grace; it sputters and howls while creeping along the walls of the subconscious like a malevolent spectre, and when faint screams start to punctuate the cold industrial aesthetic, it moves from being unfeeling to weirdly unclean.

It’s this ability to work its way under the skin that has set even GTT’s minor works in a league of their own and when the songs are truly given the chance to breathe and stretch their tendrils, they become pure nightmare fuel. They can conjure up images in the mind that echo those created by Clive Barker and David Cronenberg, albeit even more heinous as the depravity the tracks convey draws from evil that is all too human and familiar.

With his latest collection, Mories has once again tapped into utter hopelessness and vomited forth a terrible, beautiful and disturbing work of art.

Label: Consouling Sounds
Band Links: Official | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram

Scribed by: Dave Bowes