YHWH Nailgun: “I remember thinking: what would I like to see instead of this bullshit?”

On their algorithm-defying, white-knuckle-inducing debut album 45 Pounds, New Yorkers YHWH Nailgun are taking a stand against the uber ironic cool of late-2010s indie rock.

Melodic yet abrasive, rhythmic yet discordant, brutally intense yet deftly agile – New Yorkers YHWH Nailgun defy clean categorisations. But their genre-flaming sonic assault – think Animal Collective meets Death Grips via Show Me the Body, with a hint of math-rock veterans Battles – is not the only thing that is difficult to define. “We all have a similar feeling that we want to express in music,” says synth player Jack Tobias. “The band is where we all meet for this idea and emotion that we want to convey.” But ask for specifics on what this feeling is and you’ll be stonewalled. “I don’t know if it can really be put into words,” Tobias says. 

It becomes clear from spending an hour with the band that they are more than content to exist in a messy, ultimately indefinable space. For them, it’s where creativity reigns. When analysing how their gnarly, industrial-tinged songs come into being, vocalist Zack Borzone is quick to emphasise the importance of “intuition or instinct”, while drummer Sam Pickard suggests a lot of their process is simply about responding to “vibes”. This nebulous – at least to those outside the band – summary of intuition and vibes prompts a moment of nodding, mutual agreement. Indeed, at times this wilful refusal to put a name to what they do feels like an unspoken mantra – one that underpins how they create music together: in a room, together, no preconceptions, no bullshit. “The way we write, no one’s ever coming in with an idea they already have,” Tobias says. “Every sound comes from the ground up when we’re in the room together.”

YHWH Nailgun (pronounced Yahweh, like the name of God in the Hebrew Bible) formed in Philadelphia during Covid, initially as a drums-and-vocals duo comprising Borzone and Pickard. A move to New York saw them bring Tobias and guitarist Saguiv Rosenstock into the fold. Since then, they’ve played alongside fellow genre outliers Nourished by Time and Chanel Beads and released two EPs – one self-released, the other on Philly label Ramp Local. Now, they’re about to level up with the release of their debut album, 45 Pounds, on the free-roaming London label AD 93 – home to the likes of Moin, Jasmine Wood and Martha Skye Murphy. 

As far as debut albums go, 45 Pounds is a post-genre, algorithm-defying, white-knuckle-inducing opening salvo. From the first track, Penetrator – which sets the tone for a record filled with guttural growls, wobbling synths, rhythmic flurries and wildly unpredictable time shifts – the album careens along in a sonic embodiment of their bracingly instinctive approach, with most songs barely breaking two minutes. “It’s about being concise,” Rosenstock explains. “We like brevity and clarity and getting ideas across in a small amount of time.” Borzone expands: “I like to condense and harmonise things that you’ve never heard harmonised before. Also, just to make it hit really hard and be overwhelming.” 

Pickard describes the band as “a child of the post-Covid music world”, and it’s clear that their scorched-earth approach reflects a feeling that the band was forged from a period of significant change. “It felt like something had ended when we started out,” Pickard says. “What had been happening for years was feeling almost terminally ill – like a collapse around certain cultural touchstones, and attitudes about music and how it should be made. I remember thinking: what would I like to see instead of this bullshit?” 

And what exactly is the bullshit they wanted to stand in opposition to? “The era of indie rock in the late-2010s,” Pickard explains. “There was this weird thing that I couldn’t put my finger on, but I felt alienated from it. A certain type of unseriousness. And I don’t mean that it’s better for people to take themselves really seriously, but that whole ten-degrees-of-irony thing always rubbed me up the wrong way – it was a type of cool that made me feel uneasy,” he says, still sounding pained when talking about it. “It felt like all these prescribable ideas of what a band gets to be were revealed over that period, and it was like: just do whatever fucking feels true and real.”   

Sounds like: The antidote to unseriousness
Soundtrack to: Destroying the algorithm
File next to: Death Grips, Animal Collective, Ebbb, Show Me the Body
Our favourite song: Penetrator
Where to find them: @yhwhnailgun