Gnawed – Subterranean Rites LP Cloister Recordings / CD Malignant Records 2020
Having followed Gnawed since 2012’s Terminal Epoch album (reviewed here), Subterranean Rites arrives as the new album from this long-established and well-regarded American death industrial/ power electronics project. From initial listens it is noted that like 2016’s album Pestilence Beholden (reviewed here), Subterranean Rites also opts to chart territories of greater restraint, thus its charred black atmospheres are weighted heavily towards the death industrial side of the project. So, while Subterranean Rites is an album which perhaps does not substantially deviate from what has come before, it is also very much a case of displaying significant refinement with its meticulousness approach to composition and the balancing/layering of its sound elements.
Subterranean Rites features a mere six track in total, but each span between seven to nine minutes, thus indicating the slow pace in which the individual tracks unfold. The album’s atmosphere then perfectly aligns with the imagery of the cover which shows underground sewers adorned with makeshift altars of obscure worship. Of further note the cover highlights that: ‘All sounds and voices recorded in various sewers, concrete vaults, and tunnels systems 2017-2019. Al photographs taken at recording locations’. With these chosen methods and locations of recording, a real sense of forbidding atmosphere has been generated and has been completely infused within the recorded sonics (while I then assuming those recording elements have been further manipulated into their final compositional forms). Ultimately it is a case where thick and grimly echoed catacombic atmospheres abound, as other sustained synths drones, muted sub-orchestral tones, and weighty thudding ‘beats’ provide structure. The vocal when sporadically used are duly smeared with distortion and rendered mostly as an additional sonic element. The further addition of controlled raw scrap metal sounds gives significant sonic detailing and provides the material in a dank and decaying ‘real-world’ aesthetic (as opposed to the ‘cleanliness’ of computer program creations).
While Subterranean Rites has perhaps not reinvented what is known from the project, it is still a matter of clear refinement and step up to the next level to make for an exceptional death industrial album. With the vinyl edition being on Cloister Recordings, Malignant Records handling the CD edition.