Album Review : GNAW - Barking Orders (2020)
GNAW is an American noise rock band fronted by a man named Alan Dubin. This statement is completely unremarkable if you’ve never heard Dubin sing. I can only describe his voice to be a mix of AC/DC’s Brian Johnson and a broken dentist drill. It is unforgettable. The majority of us know Alan Dubin from his work with legendary doom metal outfit Khanate, but he hasn’t been sent back to hell when they disbanded. GNAW has been doing its thing for over a decade now. They have a new EP out called Barking Orders and it is exciting and terrifying at the same time.
Barking Orders is a little over twenty-six minutes long and counts what you could loosely call four “songs”. The opener Kollaps is actually a cover from German band Einstürzende Neubauten that was translated to English. It is the most intense listening experience on Barking Orders. Drummer Robin Fowler’s bombastic performance has the intensity of someone desperate knocking on your door and begging you to let him in. Dubin alternates between mantra-like one liners and tortured shrieks, which give the song this disjointed feeling that was so cool with Khanate.
My favorite song on Barking Orders is their single Rid the City, though. It’s different from what I previously knew of GNAW and pretty much everything else I’ve ever heard. Inspired by the Son of Sam killings, it’s a loose, fragmented nine minutes behemoth that fades in and out of focus like someone having a dissociative episode. Although Alan Dubin is still quite commanding on it, it feels like more of a collective effort as wailing guitars and layers of sounds expertly clash into one another to create an atmosphere of slow-moving dread.
Cry Louder and Then The Sunrise are borderline instrumental songs. You can hear sparse screeching on the former, but they are experimental collages more than anything. They’re more difficult than Kollaps of Rid the City and their strategic placement on Barking Orders force you to shift your expectations and remain alert. I perceived them to be interludes between the two bulkier, more theatrical songs on the EP, meant to keep you in the proper mood. But I could be wrong. Maybe there are subliminal messages on them. That would be very GNAW-like.
Now, the million dollar question for neophytes: why would you listen to GNAW at all? Why would you put yourself through this?
Well, it’s a valid concern. I called Alan Dubin’s old band Khanate “great music to die to” in my review of their debut album and I believe GNAW is a logical evolution of that. It’s great music to stab someone to and plead not guilty for reason of insanity after. It’s brittle, fragmented and unpredictable noise rock. It build colossal riffs and melodies, explodes into a million pieces and starts over again. For that reason, I believe that GNAW really understands and expresses inner turmoil better than most bands. Their music makes you feel seen and heard.
Now, is Barking Orders a good record? It most definitely is. I feel like it’s the most poised and sophisticated effort from GNAW yet. But it’s very short for such an ambitious record and really only has one original song in the conventional sense of the term: Rid the City. I loved Kollaps, but it didn’t fit the creepy, desolate mood on every other song in Barking Orders and that sticks out because there’s so few of them. The music is solid and forward thinking, but it feels like pieces of a greater picture GNAW has kept away from us. It’s uncomfortable, but so is most of their music.
7.5/10
