Naam

Photo by John Anderson

Naam

You can probably gargle better, but no more guttural or Godlike, than Brooklyn-based Naam throat Ryan Lugar, but you'll have to sacrifice your uvula. Small price, true, but "Black Ice" is slippery like a thick wad off chaw'd-off black, tentacled doom. Paint-stripping the Mohawk's interior, Naam made it so that it was all you could do to make the tiny space feel homely or safe. Eli Pizzuto's double (triple?!) kick drum kept dreamtime pace with something even Cthulhu would have a hard time dreaming to, and co-Lovecraftian John Bundy's bass was eldritch ichor incarnate. Per H.P. Lovecraft: "The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined, and does not bring restful dreams at night." This was Brooklyn metal made Texan, and proud either way. "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!" Gutted like a true spawn of Austin.