Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Cassette Review: Dendera Bloodbath "Hungry Ghosts" (\\NULL|ZØNE//)


$7 //
Edition of 50 //
https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/album/hungry-ghosts

A harsh wind comes through.   Squeaking joins it, as do sort of background howls which can also be heard as some sort of chanting.   This is all nicely hidden away in the background though because man does this static blare through hard.   Some singing turns to lightsabers and then a charging/marching pace for the distorted void.    Static bursts come through like bombs dropping.   Boom boom boom.   Each one landing and destroying another one of your foundations of how music should sound.

The singing is back and this time it is mixed in with the dropping of the bombs.   It sounds almost church-like.   Things begin to calm down now.   There are slower waves and then this plowing feel with tones in the background.   What follows is a sound kind of like digging but even more like scraping.  I hear what sounds like water so I imagine someone scraping a lead pipe across the wall in a sewer in hopes of trying to dig through to the other side, but as I think of that particular image I realize this could just as easily be set in prison with prisoners attempting an escape.

The singing justifies my thinking it was church-like earlier as the lines come out: "I hear music in the air / there must be a God somewhere".   I feel like this must be from some recorded church sermon (Which I know all too much about) and it is spliced in here for good measure.  Is anything else in the background trying to bring me to the light side?  Now I will always wonder.   Video games come out sounding a little bit like Atari but mostly the arcade.   Skipping electronics and weird vocals make me feel like we're stuck in The Matrix.

A loud burst comes through and it makes me feel like we're racing down at the speedway.   Granted, I've never actually been to a race track in that sense, but I've seen them on television and in movies.   Yeah, it did kind of make me want to watch Ricky Bobby (R.I.P. Michael Clark Duncan)  Though for all I know, this could just as easily be pulled from Pole Position.   Words begin to make their way through the ignition and the acceleration begins to climb so that the pitch is left higher.    This all shifts to big synth melodies in a loop plus some clicking.

Between the distortion, the electronic clicking, the synth tones and trippy vocals I'm not sure what to compare this with but this laughing comes through towards the end of it all.  It's a soft "ha ha ha, but it is there.   Loud bangs come through next.   There is some distorted drone and then vocals come through speaking in a way you might imagine Satan would.   So, yeah, I'm feeling like this cassette should think of what it was singing about earlier and bring back the good word of God.   This could somehow be some sort of soundtrack to Hell though-- not because it is bad but because it just feels dark and has sharpness that feels like screams thus making it terrifying to some perhaps.

Modem squeals come through as well.   This takes on a bit of an industrial feel as it grinds and clanks.   It goes between doing this and not and then finally all ends when the next piece of static bursts comes out.    Tones go back and forth and then become manipulated to where they stretch and then get cut off seemingly at random.   This also leads to distortion again and this feeling like we are in fact now playing a video game based on racing.  I am feeling a little bit like it's "Excite Bike" before the distortion comes through like a water sprinkler.

These whirrs and other electronic sounds fade in and out and take you on quite the adventure, static included.  It also can reach a point of video game glitch sound.    As this all builds and drops, then builds and drops, it ultimately ends up building to one point and then just cuts off to end it all.







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