Dosis Letalis - Souless Reign [Ominous Recordings - 2016]From September 2016 here we have a C60 release from Serbian walled-noise project Dosis Letalis. The tape takes in two side long slices of taut, suffocating, and thickly weaved wall-matter. The release came in an edition of 15 copies, and as of writing the label still has 5 copies left. I must say I’ve been fairly impressed by the three or four release I’d heard from this project over the last few months- so when I saw this in a new batch of review copies from Ominous Recordings I was most keen to check it out. What we have here are two fairly formal, unsurprising, though engrossing enough examples of dense & unbreakable HNW- which has some subtle layer shifts mixed-in.
In the past I’d been quite taken by some of the projects more original & creative selection of textures, sadly this side of the project isn’t really present on this release. So instead you get a selection of lower-to-mid ranged tones, which are set towards rather standard/ typical ‘wall-noise’ texturally patterns- taking in layers of rattling, juddering, skittering, and jittering noise. The thing that does pull you in, and keeps you there is the way the layers are blended.
The first sides track is “Soulless Voices Reign…”. It offers up a boring/ drilling low-end base, and over the top of this malevolent drone we get a selection of thinner rattling ‘n’ shaking textures. The base has a sort hovering on/off quality to it, while the topping textures have a certainly amount of separation to them, and each of these is performing a simple though effective pattern detail. As the ‘wall’ progresses you get some subtle shifts in the patterns layers, though these mostly at a micro level- that said from time-to-to time you get a sudden more skittering & slightly careering texture appear in the thick weave.
Flipping over to side two we have “…Our Voiceless Souls”. Here we get a more set, boiling & bothersome low-end, and this initially is topped with thinner more skittering & rattling textures. As the ‘wall’ progresses more of the thinner layers are added to the ‘wall’- though these mainly stay in a simple textural setting. This side feels a lot more pressing & head drilling in its attack- with the topping layers adding a nice feeling of earth moving velocity to the proceeding. Where the first sides track had more layer detail, this feels a lot more blunt & brutal. Coming off like something you could imagine fellow( though sadly defunct) Serbian project Dead Body Collection putting out.
So to sum up Soulless Reign- I was once again fairly impressed by what’s on offer here, sure both ‘walls’ textural make-ups where hardly original, but the way Dosis Letalis brought the elements together made the release appealing. So while it’s not the best thing I’ve heard from the project it’s certainly worthy enough, and if you’ve enjoyed their other work, or like dense & thickly weaved HNW it’s worth a punt. Roger Batty
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