Ask anyone without warning if there is a guitarist in YHWH Nailgun, and they might pause to think. This is not an insult to Saguiv Rosenstock, a fascinating instrumentalist whose 2022 enlistment in the band helped transform them from an atavistic burst of feeling into the multivalent, spellbinding entity they are today. Rosenstock was also the source of drummer Sam Pickard’s rototoms—an inspired choice that became a convenient press hook for their exhilarating 2025 debut, 45 Pounds.
The reality is that, regardless of how many times one sees the quartet live, they function less like four individuals playing distinct parts and more like a single, cohesive organism. Much like the work of The Body, early Battles, or Lightning Bolt, YHWH Nailgun collapses the boundaries between members. Their music is less a composite of people and more a singular force they collectively exude.
A Structural Marvel in Miniature
That sense of unity has intensified on Magazine, a 10-track, 11-minute barrage that is so dense with musical ideas and lyrical intrigue that it demands to be treated as a full-length statement. If you listen passively, the record rips past you, the drums-down-the-hallway fade-in of opener “Ghost of Love” acting as an ellipsis to their previous work. However, if you sit with it, Magazine reveals itself as a structural marvel—evidence of the band’s ability to fit entire worlds of self-doubt and defiance into tracks lasting under 90 seconds.
The rototoms are gone, and the music moves even more cohesively as a result. Pickard remains a rapturous drummer, maintaining a swing through the heavy metal rumble of “Give Blood” while treating the rests on “Innocent Sigh” with the precision of a master. The lack of those specific drums emphasizes the band’s link to dub, with sounds ricocheting off one another as if trapped in a room with low ceilings. The three-way counterpoint in “Hips on a Wheel” suggests white light seen through stained glass, while the static bursts in “Ballerina” feel like accidents honored as intention. It is easy to hear a lineage stretching from Lee “Scratch” Perry to This Heat in these four insurgent New York tinkerers.
Focus and Direction
The band has also touted a shift in vocal production for Magazine, stripping away effects from frontman Zack Borzone’s voice in hopes of avoiding abstraction. The result is visceral. Borzone is intensely sibilant on “Stillness Blues,” his tone etched into flaking magnetic tape, while his moans and roars on “Burns” conjure the intensity of a salvaged recording of a madman’s final confession.
His writing has found new focus, documenting depravity and self-deception in poetic fragments. Whether he is grunt-singing about being a “hangman” on “Hips on a Wheel” or half-sighing about “demon shine” on “Sewer Tree,” Borzone’s lyrics feel like snapshots of a larger, darker story. Yet, there is a glimmer to everything YHWH Nailgun does—it is light reflecting off obsidian.
Ultimately, Magazine is a tremendous next step. It proves that the band that made songs as singular as “Castrato Raw (Fullback)” can not only repeat that success but refine it. If you thought the rototoms were a gimmick, they are gone; if you thought the words were inscrutable, they now carry the urgency of motivational slogans for the dispossessed. YHWH Nailgun has found its mission.
