Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens

YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens
For the ascendant New York City band, screaming and laughter occupy the same breath.
Photographer Marcus Maddox

The FADER’s longstanding GEN F series profiles the emerging artists you need to know right now.

“Nobody’s alerted me that we’ve broken through,” drummer Sam Pickard says with a chilly laugh. The four members of YHWH Nailgun — an ascending crew of left-field shredders — are sitting at Abracadabra Magic Diner in Queens, New York City, contemplating their rise. It’s one of the coldest mornings of January; the sidewalks are caked with snow and in the colorful café’s heated back room I can see Pickard’s breath. But spirits are animated among the band who check themselves by cracking jokes if the conversation gets too serious. At times, it seems they’re trolling themselves mid-interview as if to underplay the thoughtfulness that defines their music.

From their dour press photos to pummeling polyrhythms, YHWH Nailgun have reignited the flame of ‘70s New York City no-wave. With just a handful of tracks the four-piece has gone from getting the cops called on cramped Bushwick tunnel shows to opening for spiritual forebears including Xiu Xiu, A Place To Bury Strangers, and Carl Stone over the course of five years. I heard of them through word of mouth, when a friend visiting from the West Coast played me “Castrato Raw (Fullback).” Acrobatic lyrics are bellowed above a wall of pitched percussion, discombobulating electronics, and snotty fretwork. Immediately, their brawny technicality packed a punch that could shoulder any act in the vanguard of heavy rock.

Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens

Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens

Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens

Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens

“A lot of it is intuitive, not to act like it’s this magical power or something,” Pickard says of the band’s philosophy. “But if you talk about technical stuff or practical things with regard to writing music, there’s some kind of ideal that [we’re] trying to get to.”

Nailgun’s only ambition: invent a style they wished existed. The band sparked during COVID-19 isolation though the members had been orbiting each other for years. Pickard, vocalist Zack Borzone, guitarist Saguiv Rosenstock, and synthesist Jack Tobias were fans of each others’ work from gigging in Pennsylvania and New York City’s DIY circuits. With everything on hold, Pickard and Borzone — who were roommates in Philadelphia at the time — workshopped songs during lockdowns. They tapped Tobias to flesh out Nailgun’s lineup after moving to New York City, while Rosenstock was asked to produce their debut EP, 2022’s No Midwife And I Wingflap. Ultimately, he fell into place as a permanent fixture.

YHWH Nailgun say they have an appreciation for Downtown rebelliousness but the legacies of no-wave pioneers Suicide and Theoretical Girls occupy little headspace. (The descriptor, however, isn’t totally off the mark: Borzone’s vocal style is always oscillating between goblin-y rasp and blood-curdling shriek.) They’re more influenced by modern hip-hop, reggae, and techno than old-school avant-punk. Sometimes, that means classification can be tricky; Tobias amusingly relays a story about getting recognized at a party as the keyboardist of a “screamo band.”

Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens

“A lot of it is intuitive. But if you talk about technical stuff or practical things with regard to writing music, there’s some kind of ideal that [we’re] trying to get to.”

How all this gets synergized to become Nailgun’s sound can be attributed to whatever alchemy goes down in the studio. Their sandblasted, 2025 industrial cut “Penetrator” prefaces a batch of relentless material that was recorded in upstate New York. YHWH Nailgun have developed a self-professed telepathic connection that allows them to write quickly at laidback, convivial rehearsals. From the new music I hear, it’s clear the band has been tightening their formula of scatterbrained boundary destruction; it makes me imagine what might happen if art-pop veterans Deerhoof tried interpreting death metal.

“It feels like you’re in a big mansion and you’re opening doors. Once you open the door to the right room, all the songs pour out of there,” Rosenstock says of creating the band’s forthcoming debut album on the London imprint AD 93. His metaphor spurs Pickard to go on a wry tangent about Scooby Doo that leaves the others in stitches.

Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens

The members of YHWH Nailgun have now climbed to a juncture where they’re too occupied with music to hold full-time jobs but still unable to focus solely on the band. They squeeze rehearsals and band-meetings between service shifts, freelancing, and solo projects. Perhaps these limitations, too, impact the franticness of YHWH Nailgun’s abrupt sonics.

“Sometimes we’ll barely see each other over the course of a week. The only time we’ll really see each other is the three hours that we practice for,” Pickard says. “We go in and we play music for maybe half an hour, and then we literally are just hanging out for two hours and talking about whatever. And then we’re, like, ‘Nice one, guys!’”

Recently, a YHWH Nailgun track surfaced from one person nonchalantly noodling three notes — a dynamic that Pickard sardonically compares to a Rube Goldberg machine. For as effortless as YHWH Nailgun portray their methods to be, the end result is always remarkably brash and scorching, a difficult force to evade upon unlatching its cage.

Interview: YHWH Nailgun’s technical rock will rip you to smithereens