Nightmare Castle / Fouke / Dead Body Col - Mythos And Lore [Altar Of Waste - 2014]This three way HNW split is themed around mythical monsters from each respective artists cultural heritage…so we get a Loup Garou( werewolf) themed wall from New Orleans based Nightmare Castle. A Southern Sasquatch themed one from Texas based Fouke, and a Leshy( a eldritch woodland based spirit) from Serbian based Dead Body Collection. So first up we get Nightmare Castles track which is entitled “Moon Of The Wolf”. This twenty three minute ‘wall’ is based around a locked & churning machine like muffled low-end, which is played over by over by galloping ‘n’ locked thinner static texturing. The track has a fairly typical Nightmare Castle feel to it with the locked, aged, & monochrome like textures bringing to mind black & white horror movies/ b-movies. I’d say the ‘walls’ ok, but it’s nothing spectacular…so if you enjoy the projects past work you may well enjoy this, but it’s certainly not the best thing NC has done. Next is the Fouke track, and this is entitled “Agogwe”. It comes at just over nine minute, and is built around detailed & layered matt of rapid yet atmospheric noise texturing- this project is of course one of the mainly projects of Texas noise legend & HNW originator Richard Ramirez. The ‘wall’ meshes together a dense yet subtle shifting mass of pelting & lashing static weaves, eerier billowing wind like under sweeps, & juddering ‘n’ jittering rumble. As one would expect from Ramirez, this is a very accomplished & masterful bit of wall-making, which nicely brings to mind images of been stalked by bigfoot in the storm battered woods of Texarkana. So last of all we have a just under twenty minute wall from Dead Body Collection, which is entitled “To Him, Who Walks Through Forest At Night”. And it’s fair to say this track is the most urgent & intense of the three tracks here- it’s built around a tautly locked ‘n’ rapid angular jittering, which is swirled by a mass of searing ‘n’ juddering noise. Once again this feels like you out in a forest, but this time it’s in the middle of a force ten snow storm, & you’re pinned up against a tree by the raging spirit of the Leshy. So in summing this split has a rather interesting & neat theme running through it. Both the Fouke & DBC ‘wall’s’ are keepers, with the Nightmare Castle track just been ok…so two out of three isn’t bad for a split, and as I say above the NC track is not bad, it’s just a little predictable. Roger Batty
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