My first encounter with Gnawed was shortly after the release of 2014’s Feign and Cloak, which I discovered after it was recommended by Zero Tolerance Magazine in an issue published around the same time. I was immediately a fan of the harsh, gritty soundscapes and dank atmosphere which Grant Richardson (Gnawed) produced. Unlike other noise or power electronics projects I had been exposed to at that time, what struck me most was that Gnawed was a very well organized project in spite of its harshness and grinding industrial sound.
I was no less impressed by the most recent Gnawed offering, “Subterranean Rites” which was released via Malignant Records just this past June. Subterranean Rites eschews some of the harsher elements of earlier releases, but is no less heavy for having done so. This claustrophobic offering is comprised of “over three years of location recordings in sewers, subterranean facilities, and abandoned industrial complexes” according to the album description on both the Malignant Records and Gnawed Bandcamp pages, and the end-results are fantastic: ominous vocals, sounds of machinery and chains dragging across stone or concrete, and a profoundly bleak ambiance conjured quite literally from the depths of the earth all manifest into a glorious, dark album.
I highly recommend this album as an introduction to other releases by Gnawed, as it may be more palatable to those who are not accustomed to some of the more challenging listens in the project’s back catalog, but do not mistake this for weakness as Subterranean Rites is focused, well-honed, and refined on it’s own.
Support Gnawed: Listen to Subterranean Rites below:
Subterranean Rites by GNAWED
Towers of Rust 