Originally written by Chris Chellis.
To say that I was not expecting what I heard on An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood would be the kind of understatement that takes on a life of its own, walking slyly away from anything resembling what we associate with reality. In fact, that image of some shapeless thing slithering through our perceptible world, creeping ever closer to a void we, earthly beings that we are, could never hope to reach, is entirely appropriate for a recording as challenging to our understanding of music as this release from Gnaw Their Tongues.
Part horror flick soundtrack and part symphonic torture music, the songs that comprise this release will not appeal to everyone. It is safe to say that An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood, a title appropriate for something this dark and depressing, will appeal to a very limited audience. This stuff makes Xasthur sound pop. The soundtrack comparison is not a stretch. A buddy of yours could secretly play a song like “Sawn Asunder And Left For the Beasts” over some morbid horror movie you’re watching and you wouldn’t know the track is not part of the flick itself. It’s creepy dracula drone, and if sitting down to a full album of the kind of music that plays just before some poor victim reaches his inevitable end doesn’t sound like an experience you’d enjoy then you are better off avoiding this at all costs. However, if atmospheric music is your thing, you tend to collect horror/sci-fi soundtracks and you don’t mind the occasional quasi-black metal screech then Gnaw Their Tongues’ third full-length is an effort worth acquainting yourself with.
Unfortunately, my inability to fully understand the point of these exercises in patience prohibited me from immersing myself in this album long enough to like it. Of course, that’s assuming that, if given the opportunity, it would grow on me. Somehow I think this is something you either “get” or “don’t get,” repeated listens be damned. Go into An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood with an open mind, and you might grab onto something in this that I never felt myself. I applaud Gnaw Their Tongues for doing something slightly different, but when the result is as polarizing as this it’s hard not to see how the core of this atmospheric sound could be taken in a more digestible direction.
