Nightmare Castle - Bathory [Muzikaal Kabaal - 2012]“Bathory” sees this Louisiana based HNW projet paying it’s sonic tribute to one of the more bloody & macabre figures in world history. Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, was a Hungarian noble women who tortured & killed hundreds of young girls in the 1600’s. She was meant to have bathed in the blood of her victims to keep her youth, and her crimes are said to be a influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the vampire myths in genreal. The release comes in the form of a CDR that comes in the house style mini/ thin DVD case of the Muzikaal Kabaal label. The black & white artwork features on it’s front cover an oil painting of the countess, and on it’s back cover a small picture of a ruined castle, which I’m guessing was where the Countess resided.
The release features a single fifty two minute track that’s entitled “The Scarlet Countess". The track starts off with a sample from some B horror movie with a female & male character discussing all the perverse & bloody acts that Countess took part in. With-in just over a minute the ‘wall’ kicks in, and it’s a wonderful lo-fi & muffled mixture of locked churning noise tone & slightly squeaking jittering- this is wrapped in a fixed battering storm back drop. There’s very much a murky ‘n’ locked almost industrial type looping churning to the whole ‘wall’, and once again the project managers to capture perfectly that feeling of aged monochrome horror.
All told this is another very worthy release from this hypnotic & horror fed project. Nightmare Castle really seems to be fast becoming one of the more distinctive sounding & consistent US Walled noise projects around.    Roger Batty
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