Sentient Ruin is proud to announce that Seoul’s Gawthrop are about to return to reconsign the sub-genre of sludge metal to its most resplendent and burdensome form with their forthcoming debut album "Kuboa", a monumental death and doom-scarred feedback-worshiping monstrosity that will stomp, crush and flatten the listener to death.
"Kuboa" has been teased by the always poignant extreme metal blog Toilet ov Hell, who in premiering the band’s new single “Hogweed” have remarked how Gawthrop “take you back to those first and second waves of sludge, when it all felt impossible and titanic, a form of as-yet unknown enmity and antipathy that touches something substratal in your sense of self“ - you can check out the track and the premiere HERE.
The enigmatic South Korean amplifier-torture cult had already given the world a glimpse into their cryptic auditory horror through 2019’s self-titled and 2022’s "Jumbo" demo tapes (both remastered and re-released by Sentient Ruin as the "Deterioration" vinyl LP compilation in 2023), but what awaits the listener on the band's first official full-length offering is something so wretched and crushing that it will test the composure and impressionability of even the most unfazed skeptics. Across its grueling thirty six minutes "Kuboa" unravels a suffocating burial of downtuned auditory nihilism that will leave both die hard fans of sludge/doom and extreme metal enthusiasts in general alike in awe and overcome by the ghastly payload of absolute slow-crawling death they've just been crushed by. The legacy of pillars of the genre like Corrupted, Noothgrush, Coffins, and Meth Drinker lives on through seven epochal and genre-defining slabs of all-devouring subsonic auditory torment that restore sludge/doom to its most iconic and crowning glory.
"Kuboa" is slated for a September 19 2025 release on LP, CD, MC and digital formats worldwide via Sentient Ruin, with all formats and a brand new spread of on-demand merch now available for pre-order via all our channels.
Gawthrop first emerged in Seoul, South Korea, in 2019, Using crushing levels of amplified distortion and feedback, stacks of amplifiers lined up to flatten crowds, humongous downtuned guitar riffs chained together to deliver absolute death, telluric drums, violent vocals, and a general mood and atmosphere of total nihilism and abjection. Quite mysterious in their pre-documented whereabouts, the band first revealed its existence with a debut 2019 self-released and self-titled demo tape - an imposing example of contemporary nihilistic crushing sludge especially reminiscent of the glory of 90’s early-to-mid career Corrupted (or of their initial EPs and “splits era”) which instantly captured the attention of Sentient Ruin, who thus began following the band’s progress closely from then on. But the band’s origins stretch far before 2019, and have a direct connection to South Korea’s extreme metal scene from the early 00’s. Founding gutiarist/vocalist Hyunwoong is a veteran in Seoul’s extreme music underground, having first created the depressive black metal project 폐허 (Pyha) in 2002 as a teenager (which eventually received several releases back then with legendary US label tUMULt), and later having formed the now defunct sludge/death-doom band Gonguri in 2014 (among other projects), an early precursor to Gawthrop. With Gonguri dissolved, Hyunwoong carried forth, and teamed up with fellow Korean bassist Sunggun and Chinese transplant drummer Owen to lay the foundation of Gawthrop. This lineup proved implacable, taking the sludgy sewer-rotted death of Gonguri to inevitable conclusions, and eventually birthing the now classic aforementioned 2019 debut demo tape, at first self-released, but later reissued on cassette by local South Korean label MYDY Records, and later on CD by Irish label Cursed Monk Records. A split 7” with Singapore’s Drug Noose surfaced in 2020, followed by the three-way “Far East Nihilism Front” split CD with Sithter and Misersplit in 2021, with both releases displaying a more experimental and abstract sound, until a complete return to form was redelivered with the tectonic, earth-shaking heaviness of the second demo tape, 2022’ “Jumbo”, released again by Cursed Monk Records on cassette, as well as by Taiwanese label Bad Moon Rising on CD. This second demo and its implausible heaviness was the turning point which began to make Gawthrop’s name circulate beyond their home country and the far East. Sentient Ruin didn’t wait for album to be ready but instead made contact with the band and stepped in to reissue both the demos as the 2023 12” vinyl compilation titled “Deterioration”, containing the first demo on side A and the “Jumbo” demo on side B, and with all tracks remastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios. By this time Gawthrop had turned into a quartet with the addition of bassist Minhwi (a well known South Korean folk artist), which prompted Sunggun to move to second guitar, further augmenting the band’s already monumental sound and ghastly heaviness, and preparing the ground for the creation of the band’s immense and crushing debut full-length album “Kuboa” (released worldwide in 2025 by Sentient Ruin). Shortly after “Kuboa” was completed, the COVID pandemic forced drummer Owen to return to China, and despite some sporadic trips to reunite with his band mates in Seoul for select shows, Gawthrop has since then functioned as a remote four piece, with all members still officially in the band, but with Minhwi on bass, Sunggun on guitar, and Hyunwoong filling in on drums in Owen’s absence and with the band functioning as a de-facto power trio formation for the band’s local shows when Owen can not join.