Ataraxy - A Portrayal Of Cannibalism [Altar Of Waste - 2014]This CDR on Minneapolis based Altar Of Waste offers up three thick ‘n’ truly punishing slices of (mostly) fixed & set walled noise from this German HNW/ harsh noise project. The theme for this release is Amazonian cannibalism as witnessed by outsiders circa the 16th century- with the house style AOW DVD case packaging taking in double sided colour artwork. On it’s front cover we get a reproduction of a old print cannibals chopping up bodies, and on the reverse side we get a reproduction of the diary of someone who encounted the cannibal in 1550. The three tracks last between ten & twenty mintues, and first up we have “Preparing The Captives”. This track brings together a raged yet fixed low-end meat juddering- this is lined by a selection of thinner jittering sub-tones, which batter & roast around the central tone. The whole thing has a nice feeling of brutal tension, and you can almost imagine captive travellers been tired down, & then their garments been roughly ripped & torn off. Track two comes in the form of “Over The Fire”. This track fittingly brings together three or four layers of roasting & billowing like low & mid ranged tonality. The whole thing does feel like your been lowered down towards a searing mass of flames- again the track nicely keeps in place that feeling of panic. And lastly we have “Cannibalistic Feast”- this track is built around layers of jagged ‘n’ ripping like textures, and these are fed out into a taut map of sound. I guess this is the most active of the three tracks here, as there is some shift in both layer depth & textural pattern through-out , and these nicely brings to mind a madden feast. Through the whole thing never moves too far from it’s key set of tonal patterns. Sound wise I guess this is fairly standard sounding Ataraxy release- it’s not the most creative/rewarding thing the project has put out, but neither is it the worse thing either. Each track is brutally effective in it’s own right, and clearly work has been putting into to make each of the tracks fit their titles. So in summing up it’s not a world changing release, but if you’re after brutal walled noise that has a suitable brutal theme this is well worth a go. And as of writing AOW still have copies of the available. Roger Batty
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