by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Last summer we shared the premiere of Gash’s then upcoming EP, Haha, a rough and rugged take on shoegaze that blisters instead of burns. The Eau Claire, WI trio are getting ready to release their next cassette, a split together with Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Divine Crush. Due out digitally on June 28th, with the tape release to follow, each band are offering a pair of noisy tracks, displaying a disparity in their otherwise similar approaches, one dense and overdriven, the other nuanced and prolonged. It’s a great balance between their sounds, complimenting each other as they in turn highlight each other’s differences.
Divine Crush take the A-side with their massive post-hardcore and shoegaze hybrid pushed firmly into the red. The songs instantly form walls of sound, driven by a massive layering of dirty guitars and doubled vocals. It’s blown out and thickly formed, but the harsh-and-sweet shout of the duel vocals and staggering rhythmic structures keep everything feeling agile. While tip-toeing the line between bogged down sonic mess and something driven and well focused, they wind up triumphantly in the middle. Gash opt for a (relatively) cleaner approach to the B-side, their pair songs opening with a calming, if not disorienting, imagining of that same dynamic genre split, but with an approach that creeps in rather than storms forth. Both “The Kid” and “Thumb” wind around from section to section, eventually bursting open in their own explosive glory, before receding back into the calm yet knotted and tangled progressions they are built upon.