Gnaw - This Face

This is where the end begins and the old suffers a miserable death. Gnaw is a new born beast by well known minions that have been lurking around for a long, long time and who know well their tasks. Fans of heavy and low frequencies are in for a great surprise and a harsh lesson in sound.

This Face spits in the face of traditionalists and radical analogue freaks without any sign of remorse. Instead of walking the old road of primitive expression armed with bass and drums, Gnaw climbs peaks with a DCAF System (Digitally Controlled Annihilating Frequencies).
One cannot but give credit for this choice to the two masterminds of sound design behind this 21st century misery machine, Jun Mizumachi and Brian Beatrice. Crafting every little sound with superb accuracy and blending each one of them perfectly in a lava ocean of sub-bass layers cracking floors and bringing towers down. Their contribution to sound crafting, mixing and effects application transforms this record into a mechanical hell beast torching skies.

The inclusion of various tones, sounds and frequencies ranging from the lowest to the highest deliver not only variety to the overall sound production, but it also pushes the boundaries of extreme music. Giving a close listen, the subject can easily notice the taste in the choice of sound selection, which may fool the superficial ears as a random tweaking of knobs. When bass is strongly present, all sounds are pushed forward with a higher pitch to go hand in hand with the high piercing inhuman vocal chords of Alan Dubin all while making sure the guitar lines keep your mid ranged speakers vibrating.

This Face delivers a genuine balance between digital manipulation and sound; keeping vocals and traditional instruments intact and as raw as possible. And, it is important to add that whenever a manipulation of these instruments occurs it is consciously made on a separate layer. Feelers can be seen as the ultimate proof of this sound mastery where two drum layers are used at the same time. The first one being a thin and distorted drum line mixed with the raw/live layer, which adds this enormous industrialized depth.

The album goes beyond all genres and categories and it makes sure that it doesn't fall into the noise pit thanks to the unseen 6th member, James Plotkin for his over the top mastering skills. Handling a work of the highest caliber with a great deal of heavy sound variations and layers, James perfected his work by giving the album an unparalleled extreme boost of sound all while preserving the hateful and miserable atmosphere this work vomits from start to finish. Only an experienced and veteran artist of extreme music can manage to keep this balance without making the record suffer from clipping and over compression.

This Face stabs the extreme underground scene violently with a poisonous dagger and sets a brand new standard to any filthy/raw sound production that will surely work every piece of your sound system; from the super tweeters to the tactile transducers.

A classic.