Album Review: LOTTO by They Are Gutting a Body of Water
Story by:
Addis DeFazio
I first heard They Are Gutting a Body of Water in a Pizza Skateboards video, during Vincent Milou’s part. Their sound was immediately abrasive and hard hitting. The guitars were crunchy and violent. The vocals were hushed, drowning in a bloodbath of noise and melodic destruction. It was a sedative of manic happiness, a narcotic of foamy annihilation.
That song was from 2019, right before the simulation broke – before the fast-paced goring of the old world’s organs, by way of global pandemic. The song was distinctly 21st century before the 21st century (truly) came into effect. Fans of shoegaze have likely heard of They Are Gutting a Body of Water; there are only so many contemporary shoegaze bands. Though the genre is catching more steam as of late, newer groups have been categorically pastiche, providing nothing more to listeners than a clever rehashing of old favorites (everyone wants to be My Bloody Valentine). After hearing so many just-alright imitations, I heard the song French and thought, the impasse is over, the seal has been broken.
TAGABOW has an obscenely new, unapologetic style. Their newest record, LOTTO, released in October 2025, maintains their familiar sound of heavy, crunching guitars and technological distortion, but adds a welcome addition to the mix: the sound of a world haunted by the promise of an internet utopia that never came. The listener is thrown into the algorithmic alienation of the modern age, distorting the powder-blue remnants of our early-internet childhoods.
The lyrics strewn throughout the album are based heavily on the lead singer’s experiences with addiction. Herpim, the final track on the album, is a misspelling of heroin. Doug Dulgarian, who came into addiction through being prescribed painkillers for an injury, exalts the fantasy brought by drugs while dismissing reality (‘an empty boarding sky/when real life kills my high’ -bayside k) but altogether recognizing reality as the only way out. Throughout his constant dismissal of the bitter truth of existence, he comes to love it, finding thankfulness for existence in an otherwise dark and murky cloud of nihilism. One of the album’s core themes is the dislocation of time, voluntary or not – (tell me there’s a better one/and I’ll go get my gun – american food) – signaling the depressive’s relationship to time, constantly wishing for another life or longing for the one they once had, lost in dreams of childhood that won’t go away – (sit tight kid/’cause you’re never going home/the TV, corner store/has been frozen on a former score – sour diesel).
The album ends with Herpim, a fitting ender for our apocalyptic experience. It comes at you like a hypnotic maelstrom: first an unintelligible, robotic mantra – like the dying squeal of a Tamagotchi at the end of time – and then a relatively quiet, but haunted ringing (the sound of realizing all of your life has been a lie) which quickly explodes into a burst of volcanic hellfire by way of crunchy guitar. You enter the vampire castle, gear up for the boss fight, in the old, corrupted game you played with your siblings in some darkened room lost to time. I see again the enchanted bell-tower, the storm and the night sky; I feel the torrent of rain, hear the whiplash of broken trees in the darkness. The song’s few lyrics describe the horrified feeling of a passenger on an aircraft facing extensive turbulence, ending with relief and prayer at the landing. For now, the plane is going down. There isn’t much to do but pray.
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