Anonymous — Antietam
As already mentioned all of this projects releases are themed around historic battles or war atrocities, and this time the focus is Battle of Antietam( also know as Battle of Sharpsburg). This was one of the bloodiest & most important battles of the American civil war- it took place on September 17, 1862, and in roughly 12 hours 23,000 casualties (men listed as killed, wounded, or captured/missing) were amass on both sides.
As one would expect with any release put out by the excellent Altar Of Waste label, the packaging here is something rather special- and I’d go ont say this is one of the most classy looking releases the label has put out thus. The six CDR’s come in two separate see-through DVD cases, and each case features a double sided cover taking in some of extremely early & stark landscape photographs that were taken after the battle had finished. Then each CDR features black & white face prints, taking in stark monochrome paintings of the battle it’s self. And topping the whole thing off is a separate eight page art booklet, which is held together with a hand string tie- the booklet features more pictures & maps, along with texts about battle- these texts are all written up in a ink quill like font, which gives the whole thing a real feeling of aged authenticity.
Moving onto the ‘walls’ themselves, and first up on disc one we have the track “Hagerstown Turnpike”. This slowly fades into full power with in less than a minute, and the ‘wall' is an extremely dense & claustrophobic yet layer detailed mixture of noise tones. We have a muddy & crude low-end galloping, a selection of cluttering ‘n’ snapping textures, with sways of rumbling cart wheel like texturing moving ever so often through the ‘wall’. The whole thing really is so wonderful sonically descriptive, and if one closes their eyes you can almost feel like your back 1862- watching the battle unfold before your eyes with galloping horses, overloaded carts, churning earth, & the snap 'n' pop of early artillery fire. This first ‘wall’ is a very strong start to the set, and really I think it might be my favourite moments here.
Onto disc two & we have the track “Cornfield”, and this ‘wall’ is built around a less detailed / less complex mix of tones- basically it is built around a central constantly galloping yet slight hazed tone, which is webbed by these muffled scraping /stream like static tones. The whole thing feels like it’s continual slowing & almost coming to a stop, but it never does….it’s a effective enough sonic trick/ textural mix, but I felt the track overstayed it’s welcome by about half-an-hour.
Disc three offers up “Bloody Lane - Part One”. This ‘wall’ is once again centred around a galloping texture, but this time is lot more rapid & battering in it’s attack, around this central tone we have these urgent yet muffled wiring & swirling tones. Though-out this track it feels like the pace is speeding up & up, but in reality this is another fixed ‘wall’. I did enjoy the urgency & racing feel of this track, and by the end of it’s hour run time ones feels quite breath-less…yet it still didn’t quite effect me in the same way the first disc/track did.
Moving onto disc four, and we have the track “Bloody Lane - Part Two”. This ‘wall’ seems to slow the pace once again, after three tracks rapid & battering attack. It’s built around three or four low-to-mid range crusty galloping tones that are fed into one another, all to create this great feeling of continual slowing pace. All the textures here have a fairly narrow rage, and this works very effectively- one can almost picture a mass of tired & wounded horses galloping on & on down a frozen hard or scorched bone dry once muddy lane.
On disc five there’s the track “Burnside's Bridge”- this is built around a muffled & rapid clipped judder, which is set in a mass of thinner feasting static. I’m afraid while this track is certainly dense & brutal enough, I found my mind wondering very early on in the proceedings, and it was a real push to stay in with it still it ended….so really for me this was the least satisfying track on this set.
So last of all we have disc six, and the track “The Dead Of Antietam”. This ‘wall’ conists of a run-down & muffled juddering ‘n’ rattling tone, which surrounded by the hazed sort of almost semi aquatic sounding texturing. I do like the muffled ‘n’ murky feel of this track, and it keeps me held into the end…but I’m afraid it didn’t really seem to fit the tracks title, as I felt there should be some element of sad-ness & bleakness present, and to me it just felt a emotional empty. Yes I know this is HNW, but this project has managed emotion & tragedy very well in the past, but this track missed the mark on the emotional side for me.
So in summing up Antietam- it’s most certainly one of the best presented, visual stunning & artily conceived HNW releases you'll have ever seen. But sonically I felt it was some what of a hit & miss affair- there are some great, very sonically descriptive & rewarding ‘walls’ here , but equally there are some rather underwhelming & bland ‘walls’ too- so it’s certainly not the most consistent release from the project, but if you’re a fan of Anonymous past work it's worth tracking down.