With its breakneck pace, 90-second songs, and rants against animal testing, Gouge Away’s 2016 debut, Dies, placed the band’s sound squarely within the hardcore template. But the band’s range of influences runs deeper, a fact that’s evident even from their name, which was inspired by the Pixies song. Their third studio album, Deep Sage, finds Gouge Away evolving even further toward the ‘90s noise-rock sound they introduced on 2018’s Burnt Sugar.
Singer Christina Michelle shouted her way through Gouge Away’s early songs, but she shows a broader vocal range across Deep Sage’s 11 tracks. “Stuck in a Dream,” for one, pulses with fury as she repeats its minimal lyrics—“God, I just want to wake up/Up up up up up”—but her howls on this song and others are juxtaposed by passages of more melodic singing.
Gouge Away’s songs are usually constructed with a few notes repeated over and over, letting the rhythm section propel things forward. And the band still displays a formidable command of dynamics, with curlicue guitar riffs and vocal fluctuations intended to disrupt a song’s mood. But Jack Shirley’s production falls short of the liveliness of his work on the more aggressive Burnt Sugar. And certain elements here, like supplementing Thomas Cantwell’s drums with tambourines and maracas, start to feel formulaic after a while.
A short stretch of songs during the album’s second half—“The Sharpening,” “Spaced Out,” and “Newtau”—presents Gouge Away at their most cathartic, eschewing the overt politics of their earlier work for a more introspective, personal tone. Michelle’s lyrics occasionally hint at negative experiences with an ex—“What’s an apology/If you just keep doing bad things?” Michelle asks on “Newtau”—but the exact relationship remains hazy.
There’s a limit to how eloquently Gouge Away expresses the emotions behind the songs here. “Idealized” presents a fairly reductive credo: “Don’t go through life/Seeking validation/From a friend or neighbor or institution.” The band can deftly swerve on a dime when it comes to their musical arrangements, but lyrically they fall short of delivering a punch to the gut.
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