Burial Ground - The Burning [Crystal Lake Tapes - 2013]This C60 cassette release offers up two sides worth of searing, brutal & horror fed walled noise themed around 1980’s slasher The Burning. This release comes from the fairly prolific & scene popular La Crosse, Wisconsin based HNW project Burial Ground The Burning was one of many Friday the 13th rip-offs made in the early to mid 1980’s. It followed a group of youngster going to a summer camp, and one by one they got knocked off by burnt ‘n’ deformed ex camp caretaker Cropsy. Through clearly it took a lot from F13 plot wise, The Burning had it own charms, with a likable enough cast(featuring a young Jason Alexder, who later appeared in popular Us sitcom Seinfeld), good ‘n’ effective death scenes by effect legend Tom Savini, a great shear caring ‘n’ deformed killer, and effective synth soundtrack by Yes keyboard player Rich Wakeman. The tape sleeve is a fitting black ink on blood red card affair, with the front cover featuring the iconic silhouetted shape of Cropsy with his sears raised high ready to dispatch another young camper in a brutal ‘n’ bloody manner. Side A takes in two tracks, and side B takes in just one long brutal wall battering So first up on Side A we have “Don't Look He'll See You.”, and this kicks straight in with a mix of rushing, churning & juddering noise. Burial Ground is mixing together the three, possible four, layers of noise into a devastating mesh of brutality- the wall is mid paced, though it’s difficult to complete tie down the wall's speed as each tone is seemingly moving at a slightly different pace. The tones used nicely bring to mind a mix of rapid water churning (one of the film infamous kills occurs on a raft), wind wiping through trees, and a genreal feeling of greyed hopeless panic. This first track comes in at just over the thirteen minute. The remaining sixteen/seventeen mintues of Side A is taken up by the track “Don't Move He'll Hear You”. And this opens with a minute or so sample from the movie, and this takes in an early scene from the movie where Cropsy meets a prostitute- the sample mixers togeather great edgy synth brood ‘n’ growing tension, with the dyeing cries of the prostitute. Then the ‘wall’ kicks in, and it’s a mix of deep, brutal yet brooding judder ‘n’ rumble, which has two maybe three layers of thinner grained jittering ’n’ cluttering static on top. The main deep ‘n’ brutal tone has a nice dark earthy type feel and this remains fairly fixed through-out. The other thinner tones do have a little shift in them, and they seem to get more rapidly agitated as the ‘wall’ progresses, but all told this fairly firm ‘wall’. In the tracks last minute or so the ‘wall’ thins down to just a rumbling low-end roasting tone. Flipping over to side B, we have “Don't Breathe You're Dead”, and this track takes up the whole side. The track opens with another movie sample, and this time it takes in the fire side ‘scary-the-campers’ tale of Cropsy. With-in three mintues the ‘wall’ slams-in, nearly knocking you over with it’s intensity- it’s a rapid ‘n’ battering mixture of billowing ‘n’ rumbling low end, which is surrounded by a searing noise haze. The track has a nice urgent feel to it, yet it’s also murky & disorientating too with this thin shifting noise haze element. As the track progresses the two main tones seem to start to meshed & bled together in a most hypnotic & effective manner, as your mind gets pulled deeper & deeper in the continual descending & blurring rush of the ‘wall’.
So lets sum up this release- Side A’s first track offers up a fitting & compelling mix of brutal textures, with the sides second track mixing brutal deep brood with searing static activity. And Side B's track offers up rapid brutality with a unbalancing noise haze on top. All told this is an most consistent release from Burial Ground, and I particularly like the way the film samples are a bit more sparse(compared with some of this projects other releases), meaning more focus on the wall-craft. Roger Batty
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