Bachir Gemayel & Dead Body Collection - Sniper/Knives [Hoarse Records - 2010] | ‘Sniper/Knives’ is a nasty and violent two way HNW split between Chicago based Bachir Gemayel(aka Mac Chami who also in the excellent minimalistic HNW project Insurgent & the creative yet violent Power electronics middle eastern tinged project Koufar) and Serbian based Dead Body Collection(aka Dr Alex who’s also in the excellent Harsh Noise & HNW two piece C. T. D .) Up first we have the Bachir Gemayel track which is entitled ‘Snipers’ and this starts out with either what sounds like someone making their way out of a hole under rapid and muffled sniper fire, or slow motion & muffled recording of gun shots echoing around a burt out stone building. Soon the track becomes a lot more hectic, violent, crowded and chronically thick in it’s feeling as Chami attacks you with dense layers of: muffled, crackle heavey & violently juddering rapid gun fire like noise tones. Ripping speaker fabric stabs, smashing to the ground empty shell clamouring, and shot up widows, decaying plaster board rapid gun fire attacks. It really feels like your on your hands & knees crawling from one safe place to the next in the burning middle eastern heat trying to avoid the endless & rapid sniper attacks- hell you can almost taste sand and spent gun power in your mouth. I guess you can either define this track as very active and violent juddered HNW or ‘wallish’ Harsh noise as this is at times very active and rapid in it’s attack, I guess it’s down to where you draw the line (in the sand) really. Anyway it’s a very brutal, yet strangely invigorating track that thunders, hammers and buzzers around you for just over it's twenty minute runtime. Then lastly we of course have the two Dead Body Collections tracks which are both called ‘knives’. ‘Knives(1)’ offers up just over fifteen minute of very loud, sinister and unpleasant mid-pace juddering looped HNW which finds Dr Alex brutal sliding together three different noise tones; the first ones like a constant metallic boiling tone, the second like a deep serration synth tone, and the thirds like a constant numbing & painful roar. On the whole the tracks a nice punishing and head smashing against the wall slice of unmoving ‘wall making’. ‘Knives(2)’ is slightly shorter at just under the fourteen minute mark and finds Dr Alex mixing a billowing cloud of roaring noise tone or boiling drone matter; with a steady but not too fast constant nail raining down on concrete tone. It feels like your running in slow motion away from a vast forty foot exploding concert chimney that’s piled up midway full with thousand of steel nails, and it’s all pelting and smashing down around you as you rush for some kind of shelter. So it’s yet another seared, surely ear damage but hypnotic ‘wall’ from Dr Alex. A truly painful yet highly rewarding & unforgiving HNW split which celebrates and pays tribute to two weapons that can cut out life with-in a blink or be used to slowly torture someone; and that exactly what this split does in a wonderful pleasing & consistent manner. So bite down on your gag this is going to hurt quite a lot. Roger Batty
|