The note came casually — Derek Allen checking in, mentioning that two members of Lower Automation had started a new project called Grave Gnaw and had an EP ready for December 4th. Last year we covered Lower Automation’s “Welcome to My Deathbed”, a jagged and gothic-leaning turn from their math-punk roots, and the idea of an even harsher offshoot felt like a logical extension rather than a detour. This time, though, they put the guitars down.
Grave Gnaw was built from scratch over the summer, starting with a simple constraint: make heavy music without relying on traditional instrumentation.
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Derek explained that they “started working on these songs this summer, using found sounds and making samples from everyday objects.” Most of those elements were processed until they lost any connection to their origins. He added, “Most of the sounds were processed and resampled repeatedly to create new, unrecognizable tones. We wanted to make heavy songs that didn’t rely on guitars.”
That method gives the whole offering a worn, metallic pulse — the kind of industrial clatter that sounds like it was dragged out of a basement workshop and fed through a shorted-out sampler. It’s a chaotic mix of noise, hardcore and post-hardcore sensibilities bent into something otherworldly, a set of tracks designed less like songs and more like engineered pressure systems. A mixture that will mess with your brain. Literally.
The project sits in a different lane than Lower Automation, though the connection is obvious in the architecture. Where “Welcome to My Deathbed” used 80s drum machines and synths to twist their mathcore tension into a colder, stranger shape, Grave Gnaw goes further by stripping the familiar markers entirely. Instead of angular riffs and frantic bass lines, everything here is built from objects, glitches, debris, layers of static, and rhythm patterns that feel assembled rather than played. The approach keeps the looseness of punk machinery but trades its fingerprints for circuitry.
The band will share more details soon, but the framework is already clear: two musicians seeing how much weight they can pull out of everyday stuff, and how far they can push heavy music once the guitar — the old anchor — is gone. A mind bending experiment.
