In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle begins the proper punishment of Hell, a place where “no thing gleams.” It is reserved for those overcome with Lust, where carnal appetites hold sway over reason. In Nine Circles, it’s where we do shorter reviews of new albums that share a common theme.
Two for the price of one? Why not! The themes that tie these two albums, Crippling Alcoholism’s Camgirl and Gnaw Their Tongues’ The Genesis of Light, together are “noise” and “creepy,” although the way they both approach these descriptors is entirely different. The results, though? Chef’s kiss all the way through.
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Crippling Alcoholism are no strangers on my radar now, although I missed With Love From a Padded Room when it first dropped. That album left such an indelible impression on me that I promised myself I wouldn’t fumble their next one (although, as you can see from the date this review is going up, I almost did). The way the New England sextet crafts a haunting atmosphere is like no other, and their exploration of deeply disturbing psychological topics in a way that is thoughtful above depraved is what sets them in the same caliber as Emptiness. On Camgirl, Crippling Alcoholism pull together another series of vignettes that are, this time, all tied around the titular fictional online performer Bella Pink, as told through the eyes of the people who use, abuse and consumer her. Musically, the band trades out some of the folky and doomy aspects of With Love for a heftier dose of electronic influences and even straight ahead synth pop, albeit with the requisite underpinning of dread and unease. The foundation of the music is still the soulful croon of frontman Tony Castrati, but I really feel like Camgirl is much more of a shared output than ever. There are many voices holding it down, and more so than ever, each instrument gets a moment to shine, which is nice to see from a sextet.
If you were worried about the gothic rock being gone from Crippling Alcoholism and if the thought of “catchy and accessible” makes you worried that they’ve sold out, you’re sorely mistaken. The gothic noise rock that makes them what they are is undeniably present, but it is augmented in a way that feels fresh and exciting, and ultimately very fitting for the subject matter explored on Camgirl. The new electronic elements and heavier focus on pop and party music lend themselves to much more memorability and accessibility, although I don’t know that I would call Camgirl “accessible” per se. Oh, and this album is also plenty heavy in turn as well: the title track is an example over everything Crippling Alcoholism does well, with blistering grindcore fading into gloomy gothic rock and finally a synth-heavy finish led by Castrati’s baritone drone. The whole album is a brilliant notch in the bedpost of a band that is truly putting out music unlike anything else out there, and it’s great to see them keep going down the narrative-driven path they have been on. Crippling Alcoholism seem to keep striking gold wherever they turn, and I’m honestly so excited for what comes next from them.
Camgirl is available now on Portrayal of Guilt Records. For more information on Crippling Alcoholism, visit their Instagram page.
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Gnaw Their Tongues are also nowhere near new to my musical rotation, although the way I came into them is less through hearing of their inventiveness and more about a challenge to listen to the most unlistenable soundscapes I could force myself into. If Crippling Alcoholism deal in brooding, pensive moods and introspective unease, then Gnaw Their Tongues put forth no less than abject horror and paranoid panic. The focus of this one-man project has always been uncomfortable, dissonant and terrifying drone work and harsh noise, but on The Genesis of Light, Maurice expands on this framework just a little, incorporating elements of space and texture into a palette that is mostly suffocating and nightmarish noise. In actuality, the songs that appear on The Genesis of Light were first shaped all the way back in 2008, as a simple guitar experiment that went unfinished but saved away on a backup hard drive somewhere. Tale as old as time. What is interesting is that now, seventeen years later, they are seeing the light of day, rerecorded and revitalized with new additions and the perspective of almost two decades giving them new context.
Perhaps another throughline that connects these two albums is the fear of being “too accessible” for both bands daring to lighten up the mood a little. As with Camgirl, fear not: The Genesis of Light is every bit as menacing and sonically pulverizing as its predecessors, but with new bits of nuance thrown in to switch it up. “Part 1” opens with gargantuan pipe organ blasts that jolt and startle as they fade away into washes of the reverb-soaked guitar in a hypnotic and ominous dirge that plows through your eardrums into the deepest part of your lizard brain pineal gland. The rest of the album follows suit predictably, but there are no slouching tracks here. This is like if Sunn 0))) was a little bit more musical, which should make sense given the time period in which these songs first took shape. The end of “Part 2” is almost dreamlike, far and away the most delicate and sentimental I think I have ever heard Gnaw Their Tongues get. That, of course, is almost immediately countered by the next two tracks swallowing you whole with resonant bass frequencies, but it makes for such a nice contrast from a band that doesn’t often, you know, do contrast. The Genesis of Light is such a cool release that I was not expecting to find myself more enamored of it than even I, a fan of the band despite it all, was expecting.
The Genesis of Light is available now on Consouling Sounds Records. For more information on Gnaw Their Tongues, visit their official website.
— Ian