.Birdeater. — Skeleton Leg

.Birdeater. is an arachnid focused walled/ textured noise venture, and it’s by the same person who's behind the excellent horror-themed wall project Nightmare Park. .Birdeater. has been active since 2019- with around fifteen or so releases to its name thus far. Skeleton Leg is a two-track affair from last year- each track slides in at around the twenty-five-minute mark, and each manages an effective balance between rewarding textural detail and unsettling 'been wrapped in a web' moodiness.

It's a self-released digital download- which can be found here. And the cover artwork is of a huge grey and black spider sitting in its web, looking ready to pouch. So very fitting for the walled noise with-in.

First up we have the track “Ephebopus” this is named after a South American tarantula- they apparently grow to between three and six inches, live in burrows, though apparently in their youth they frequent trees- and after seeing a picture of one of these you certainly wouldn’t it dropping on your head as you make you way through a forest. The track comes in seven seconds sly of the twenty-five-minute mark, and it’s a damn constricting and fairly unsettling example of wall-craft. It brings together a constantly muffled bass drone, which is crawled over by these jittering and flitting static textures. The drone is very oppressive and air-less in its pressing and wrapping presence, while the static textures with the crisp, yet constant movement really do feel like the sound huge ‘n’ hairy arachnid legs crawling over your face and ears. The two elements are mixed in a nicely numbing and moodily unsettling manner, and with headphones on it really does hit the mark in both textural reward and creepy atmospherics.

Next up we have “Murinus”- and once again this is named after another species of spider. It’s found across the African contentment- and is a dark orange coloured spider, which grows between four and six inches, featuring a  fishbone pattern present on its abdomen. For this wall, we have a distant industrial ambient like drone, blended with pressing sub-bass tone, that's all edged with thinner scratching like static tonality.  This ‘wall’ feels a little bit more pared-back and ambient in its presentation, though it’s still damn oppressive and airless in its attack. I’d also say it’s more atmospheric than texturally, with the drone and sub-bass really hit home in a most effectively eerier manner. Though that said the static textures are still rewarding, with them seemingly constantly falling into themselves to create a muffling-yet-eerier flow.

All in all, I was most impressed with Skeleton Leg- as both ‘walls’ really do create the feeling of either been creeped out by spiders, or having them slowly move across your flesh. As a release, it’s just on the cusp of a 4, though not quite there- so I’ve given it a very strong 3.  I most certainly be checking out more of Birdeater’s work and let us hope there are a few more physical releases down the line, as presently it just has a single cassette release in its discography, with the rest of releases been digital.