Exclusive Track Premiere: Gawthrop’s “Hogweed”
In Heaven, everything is fine.
Back in my earliest days of buying vinyl, I snagged a copy of Molehill‘s Thousand Mile Regret. Released jointly by Satans Pimp and Boredom Noise, it was a 12″ record with the two same tracks, “Tenth” and “Broken Down in the Year of the Dog,” on both sides. Though already awash in the nastiest, most brackish flood waters of turn-of-the-century sludge, I still could not believe how nasty and miserable this band from Birmingham, Alabama, sounded. The pace was agonizingly glacial and the vocals were an inhuman roar. Everything shook and buckled when I played the record. When I later heard Comfort Measured in Razor Lines…, I liked it, but I couldn’t figure out how to get so much slower, so much louder, so much more violent in the short span of one year. How does a band downtune Eyehategod? I wondered.
That’s when I learned some 12″ records need to be played at 45rpm.
Not all records, though. The debut full-length from Seoul’s Gawthrop is Far East Nihilism played at the wrong right revolutions per minute. Coming out on September 19th on Sentient Ruin, Kuboa is a “ghastly payload of absolute slow-crawling death.” There’s something heartening about the path Gawthrop has taken to this moment: two demos assembled into 2023’s superb Deterioration as well as two splits that reference the first purveyors of this kind of barbituated maladaptation. It’s not that they just sound like a kid who doesn’t know any better playing records at the wrong speed, it’s that they take you back to those first and second waves of sludge, when it all felt impossible and titanic, a form of as-yet unknown enmity and antipathy that touches something substratal in your sense of self.
Today, we’re thrilled to bring you the album’s second track “Hogweed.” The song lurches and stomps with the elephantine rage of Bongripper while Sunggun’s vocals remind you of the first time you heard Corrupted‘s Llenándose de gusanos. Even the track name itself can’t help but invoke the lawlessness of Hawg Jaw and all the other bayou dwellers of a bygone era. An excellent lead single, “Hogweed” tramples, ravages, and clearcuts, making way for other standouts “Bulbocapnine,” the Vonnegutian “Granfalloon,” and a Thou-esque closing cover that will have film nerds rejoicing.
About the song and album, the band has this to say:
Kuboa was written and recorded during the COVID lockdown. With everyday routines disrupted and the status quo disintegrated, our weekly practice sessions were one of the few things that gave us a sense of normality. The music, in some way, reflects the claustrophobic, surreal quality of the city we experienced it at the time. The giant hogweed is a plant that fascinates us. It’s enormous, it’s poisonous, and it’s absolutely hated. The riffs in the song pair well with pictures of this impressive plant.
A huge growth of noxious weed indeed. Press below and get your first taste of Kuboa!
Kuboa will be available on September 19
via Sentient Ruin Laboratories.
Scoop the LP, the CD, the cassette, or the digital.
