Gouge Away’s new album is a resurrection. Since forming in Fort Lauderdale in the early 2010s, the quartet has generated throat-mulching noise rock and shattered fragments of hardcore, imbuing every note with an intensity that felt impressively unsustainable—like the sound of a band destined to burn out and implode sooner rather than later. Their first album was titled , Dies, like a clause in the headline of a newspaper obituary: It seemed to suggest they were doomed from the start.
When the onset of the pandemic forced the band to pause writing its third album, Deep Sage, the gloomy prophecy nearly came true. Vocalist Christina Michelle stepped back from the band to “focus on [her] personal life” and moved to Portland, Oregon. Other bandmates departed Florida for different parts of the country and began to accept that their songs-in-progress might never see the light of day.
But as time passed, absence and distance papered over old disagreements and Gouge Away found that they missed each other. In 2022, they revisited the dormant project with fresh eyes—eager again to make something that felt new. The resulting songs are daringly restrained for a band best known for its frayed emotions and unrelenting extremity. These qualities are present in Deep Sage, but the new album also exhibits striking contrasts, embracing relatively softer, melodic sounds—gravity-defying shoegaze, gloomy grunge—alongside the urgent post-hardcore refractions Gouge Away have offered since their earliest days.
Their 2018 record Burnt Sugar—recorded with Jeremy Bolm (of Touché Amoré) and Jack Shirley (who’s produced for Deafheaven, Loma Prieta, and more)—represented the band’s first attempt to weave these more sedate sounds into desperate, distressed songs. Deep Sage, recorded again with Shirley, digs deeper to explore sounds that previous work only hinted at. There are songs like “Idealized,” where the melodies wriggle and squirm like the off-balance ’90s post-hardcore collected in Numero Group box sets. The stumbling, blistering “Newtau” recalls the labyrinthine riffs of David Pajo, if he were recording in an active blast furnace. Closer “Dallas,” a loving tribute to a lost friend, churns through the foamy melodies of lower-fi shoegaze, allowing space for Michelle’s voice to fall to a delicate hush instead of her usual pinched scream.
When heavy bands branch out, it sometimes comes at the expense of their previous crushing chaos, but Gouge Away pursue new directions primarily in service of increasing their overall intensity. When they launch into the seasick hardcore riffs of “Spaced Out” or the queasy AmRep fuzz of “The Sharpening” (which features some of Michelle’s most unsettled vocals across any of the bands’ records to date) the impact is felt more directly because of the quieter moments: Each of Michelle’s shredded screams arrives with the hair-raising jolt of a jump scare. It’s a new trick for Gouge Away, and an effective one—they force you to let your guard down for a moment, and then they shove your face straight back into the concrete.
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Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
