Gnash

Gnash arrived out of Columbus, Ohio with a sound built to weigh on you. The quartet pulls from three corners of heavy music at once: the rot and density of death metal, the raw frostbitten emotion of black metal, and the dragging gravity of sludge. The result is a band that does not so much play songs as apply pressure, and on their debut EP they prove they understand exactly how much an audience can take before catharsis turns into something closer to release.

That debut, "Shared Nightmare," landed in September 2022 and runs a lean four tracks across roughly thirteen minutes, which is the perfect length for the kind of suffocation Gnash deals in. There is no padding here. The EP is built around a single harrowing concept: a pair of conjoined twins in which one half dies, leaving the survivor to carry on through life shackled to a corpse he can never be rid of. It is a grim premise, and the band treats it with the seriousness it deserves, turning the record into a meditation on trauma and the slow toll of bearing something that will not let you go.

The songs earn that weight. "The Darker Half," the EP's lead single and the track Gnash chose to soundtrack with a music video, opens on bass and unsettling insect samples that establish an eerie, crawling tension before the full band drops in. "Broken Mirror Image" announces itself with a blood-curdling scream over a wall of guitar feedback, then settles into a thick, pummeling sludge groove. "The Amniotic Lake" is a highlight, picking up the tempo and leaning into genuinely groovy riffs while never letting the oppressive atmosphere lift. "Sacrificial Bastard" closes things out by simply refusing to relent, a fitting last word for a record this committed to discomfort.

A lot of what makes Gnash work comes down to vocalist Josh Richter, whose delivery is super raspy and pulled straight from the black metal playbook, yet brimming with feeling rather than detachment. He sounds genuinely anguished, which is the point, and it gives the EP its emotional spine. Around him the band locks in tight. Nicky Richter's guitar work supplies the thick, churning riffs, Ethan Martin's bass anchors the low end with real menace, and Keenan McNeal's drumming fills the space at exactly the right moments instead of cluttering it. For a young band, the sense of restraint and dynamics is striking.

What stands out most about Gnash is the focus. Plenty of heavy bands chase brutality for its own sake, but here every scream, every feedback swell, every slow-motion riff serves the story being told. "Shared Nightmare" is the rare debut that arrives fully formed in its intent, an EP that knows precisely the mood it wants to summon and never breaks character to summon it. For anyone who loves sludge with the bite of death and black metal underneath, Gnash are well worth pulling close and turning up loud.