The Cessation of Suffering

At one time, combining black metal, industrial music, noise, and experimental music was quite shocking. While some have tried to follow in Gnaw Their Tongues’ ever-looming shadow, there’s nothing quite like the original, and Maurice proves his potency yet again with ‘The Cessation of Suffering’. Uneasy, vile, grotesque, and hate-filled: these are firm tenets of this soundworld. The last few Gnaw Their Tongues have shifted that sound noisier and more experimental and electronic landscapes, and ‘The Cessation of Suffering’ sees Maurice running wild within this horrific headspace. Thematically, Gnaw Their Tongues has always dealt with the darkest sides on human behavior and humanities’ darkest excesses; this uneasy / vile / grotesque / hate-filled sound is an expression rather than glorification. ‘The Cessation of Suffering’ follows a break of three years, and suitably manifests as Gnaw Their Tongues’ bleakest album ever. Sounds bent, break, and then break further from nearly every direction; genres are chopped and screwed and then spit out from a black-hole vacuum that’s more musique concrete rather than “music.” More specifically, LP #15 strips away anything remotely “enjoyable” or indeed “musical to be left with a hollow shell of sensation, concentrating solely on horrible sounds and frequencies which mirror the horrible state of the world and inner turmoil.

There’s truly only one Gnaw Their Tongues, and ‘The Cessation of Suffering’ punctuates the fact like an enormous door slamming in the depths of Hell.