3 out of 5

Produced by: Gnaw Bone

Label: Auris Apothecary, Sygil Records

We know, thanks to some prime examples out there – 5ive, Oxes – that it doesn’t take much beyond a couple folks and some instruments to make a terrific amount of noise.  And I can respect the whole DIY recording ethic of some death metal acts; the cavernous ambience produced by these makeshift productions is often appropriately haunting, with the loss of fidelity sometimes beneficial for making musical flaws seem like tape slips or whatnot.

Gnaw Bone are the mash-up of those concepts: a pummeling, noisy act that functions something like an instrumental trio but with death metal vocals, and the hissy, muted recording style to match.  And… maybe it’s self-defeatist?

There’s a bit of “taking themselves too seriously'” here – I’m not sure if the repeated ‘prime ape is all of us’ vocal of track 2 is a joke or is SUPER MEANINGFUL – and there’s some fun stuff, effect-wise, going on that’s stuffed behind a (assumedly purposefully) shoddy recording, though mastered up by James Plotkin.  The end result is unfortunately average sounding: an impressive blaze of speed riffs and drums and screams, cut in with stomping sturm and drang on tracks like closer Wretched Bag of Bones.  You can still hear the group’s potential power through the mire, and that fidelity thing makes it toe-tappable instead of ear splitting (yay?), but the form over function is disappointing, making me wish I could hear this at full force.