Yesterday, burgeoning Brooklyn-based punk ensemble YHWH Nailgun released halting new single, “Tear Pusher.” It’s an apropos name for a sound so singular in nature– the track, which follows the band’s October release, “Castrato Raw (Fullback)” elicits a corporeal response: listen to vocalist Zack Borzone chew on consonants, push the near incomprehensible lyrics out from a clenched jaw and constricted chest cavity and feel your jaw clench too. Try to resist your own heart from palpitating to Sam Pickard’s relentlessly mean rhythms. Start feeling like you’re late and you’re in trouble, or Jack Tobias’ alarm-like synths will do it for you; and right when you’re at that critical point, reaching to gnaw on the flakes of skin around your nails and Saguiv Rosenstock’s whiny guitar feedback is making you feel like you can’t take it anymore, let those sudden bursts of harmony wash over you, orgasmically, before the discord starts again. 

Picked up by Black Midi for a tour earlier this summer and currently on tour with fellow NY group, Geese, YHWH Nailgun is rapidly becoming a mainstay of the New York (dare I say national…) music scene. In an era where genre is transmutable, where technology has sponsored the success of many acts whose presence doesn’t quite hold up at a live venue, YHWH Nailgun’s sound is refreshingly human, refreshingly blistering. “Tear Pusher” and other single “Castrato Raw (Fullback)” – while sounding jagged and primal– demonstrate how deliberate the band has been about the creation of their specific sound. YHWH Nailgun is no experimental garage group: tightly wound, expertly executed, “Tear Pusher” indicates a group prime to explode all over the scene. If you want to catch them before that happens– and it’s bound to happen sometime soon– the band will perform on November 10th at Purgatory in Brooklyn and on November 11th at Sundownstairs in Brooklyn.