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Bone Awl: Meaningless leaning mess

14/06/10 || Khlysty

A bone awl is a primitive instrument, like a spike, made –obviously, haha- from bone, which is used to puncture and open holes to softer material, like leather. Here one can find instructions of how to make one. What he won’t find is the manual to make a band like Bone Awl. So, please, fans of ultra-primitive black metal, take note here, ‘cause this is a band that will make your life happier –or more miserable, as it where.

Bone Awl is a duo from California, comprised of He Who Gnashes Teeth on guitar and vocals and He Who Crushes Teeth on drums. Our boys have taken their aliases from Thor’s two goats (Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr), who pulled his chariot and from time to time became his dinner. Obviously, Bone Awl pays, in this way, its respects to Scandinavia’s black metal heritage, but, if you want my opinion, this is only lip-service.

See, Bone Awl seems to confirm a suspicion that I had for a long time now: that, just as punk rock was nothing more than a reaction against ‘70s overblown prog rock, so black metal was the “punky”, disorderly little brother of thrash’s and death metal’s continuously increasing compositional complexity. That, while death metal was moving towards spheres of calculus-complex songs, black metal restored the balance, by “regressing” to more simplified forms of musical expression.

Believe me when I say that Bone Awl is the purest embodiment of this “regression”. The duo bases its songs around simple and repetitive riffs that sound like black metal, but strips them of everything that might construe “progression”, “embellishment” or “artistic value”, thus creating the musical equivalent of “punk” even within black metal. To make it simple, every goddamn song here sounds like hardcore punk played by a barely-adequate black metal band at breakneck speed. But, of course, this is not the whole story; not by a long shot.

The songs, while brief (none is longer than 4 minutes, most barely touch the two-minute mark) and speedy (in a way that mostly remind me of d-beat), never do seem half-baked or simplistic. The minimalistic approach that the band utilizes for the songwriting is especially effective, as, for almost 39 minutes, the listener is under a constant barrage of pointed riffing, extremely raw drumming and a black metal screaming that easily puts to shame most of the better-known screechers of the genre.

The guitar playing, which has an almost percussive quality, adds a hell of a lot character to the simple ditties of despair and misanthropy the band writes, while the lo-fi production is perfectly suited for the kind of stripped-down attack utilized by the band, as it creates a buzzing, crackling barely-penetrable wall of sound, through which the agonized screams that pass for vocals register as another stratum of cacophony and misery.

As I said before, the riffs are simple, but never simplistic (imagine early Burzum, but without Varg’s forays into overblown lengths and redundancy) and the duo, although it tries hard to come off as primitive as it gets, sounds extremely tight and well-versed on the secrets of songcrafting. The usual “trappings” of black metal (over-ambition, heavily-adorned production, drum wankery, posturing, etc, you know the drill…) are completely absent from Bone Awl’s sound, leaving a stripped-to-the-bone, extremely confrontational and aggressive sum of songs, which are cut dead when the band so feels, or end up in uncontrolled, brain-drilling feedback.

Surprisingly, for such a “primitive” outset, the song lyrics are quite poetic, in an abject nihilistic way and creepy in a way that defies the songs’ brutal nature. Here’s an example: “The bickering has stopped/The children/Have been put to sleep/Only one is left awake/Important tasks/are done in silence/Nothing is moving/around the perimeter/There are heads/of silence/that have a quiet hum/of lobotomy/But this, this is the silence/of a madman/whose visions/have silenced everything around him” and, please, don’t try to explain me what Bone Awl means by “The children/Have been put to sleep”, I’m already creeped out, awright?

To cap things off, I have to tell you that if you’re interested in buying some shit from Bone Awl, you’re gonna have to search for it, since every release is very limited (I got “Meaningless leaning mess” in vinyl and I think that this is the only format that’s been produced). The bottom line is not so simple, this time. See, Bone Awl sound as primitive and lo-fi as it gets and then some. Which, one might say, is the rule of thumb for black metal.

But the band’s simple and hyper-aggressive style, a black metal denuded of everything but the bare essentials, is completely effective and totally scary in its earnestness and pure havoc. If you’re, say, a Dimmu Borgir or Emperor friend, this record will be a complete disaster for you. But if you like your black metal as pure and undiluted as it can be, Bone Awl’s absurd –given the premise the band itself creates- blunt force and effectiveness will rip a hole in your head.

8,5

Information
Released: 2007
Label: Nuclear War Now! Productions
Website: Bone Awl MySpace (fan page)
Band
He Who Gnashes Teeth: vocals, guitar
He Who Crashes Teeth: drums

Tracklist
01. These Days Are Marked
02. Pendulum
03. One Nothing Between
04. It’s All Death
05. The Great Violence
06. Without Hesitation
07. Smiling Star-Wide
08. I Am Only Alone
09. Head Of Silence
10. Show Me
11. Will A White Face
12. Gray Heaps That Never Rot
13. Meaningless Leaning Mess
14. Crowned In Martyrmony
15. Big Decisions
16. Black Wings
17. Be Still
18. The King In Red

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