Cannibal Ritual — Eating Guts
Each side of the tape features three lengthy lessons in brutal, simplistic, and crude wall-making. There really is nothing progressive, detailed, fancy, or complex going on here, as each track sets down in a uncomplex set of noise patterns/tones, and doesn’t shift or deviate one iota over the tracks length- which depending on your mood, frame mind, and quality of textures/ tones.. can be either brutally rewarding or rather dull & tiresome.
First up on side A we have “Eating Guts”, and this ‘wall’ is built around a fairly rapid ‘n’ fixed chainsaw meets desolate juddering pattern. The whole thing has a very washed-out, thin & starkly unrelenting feel to it, and it comes in at the twenty minute mark .
The second track on side A comes in the form of “Eating Intestines”, and it’s built around a deep locked muddy judder ‘n’ rapid semi liquid like rumbling. This track really does sound like something rapidly feasting on something. I’m not if it sounds like a bunch of human cannibal chowing-down on a victims insides, to my mind it sounds more like a shoal of Piranha rapidly feasting on the twisting & flaying limbs of a slowly dying human victim. I’d say this track is one of the stand out moments for me, and it comes in at the seventeen minute mark.
Lastly on side A we have “Eating Genitals”( any-one noticing a theme here?!), and this ‘wall’ is built around a very washed out, thin & extreme crude static juddering grain. This whole ‘wall’ has a very monochrome & extremely worn feel to it- the tracks ok for the first few mintues or so, but at a runtime of eleven mintues I felt it really over stayed it’s welcome.
Flipping over to side B, and first up we have the track “Eating Bowels”. This ‘wall’ has a fairly ripping ‘n’ fixed chainsaw like feel to it’s attack, and the murky & muddy structure is built around a lower-to-mid range rapid fixed engine chug. I find the textures on this track quite appealing, but for my taste the whole thing just sounds too thin & washed out to have the desired feeling of been brutal pined-down and sonically pummelled. This track comes in at the mark fifteen minute mark.
Track two on side B comes in the form of “Eating Entrails”. And this is built around a very rapid judder, which is surrounded by cluttering static, and deep down in the ‘wall’ there this muffled industrial like churning. This Is another one of the more effective tracks here, as there is some depth & layers to the ‘wall’, and this mangers to focus one attention for the whole if the tracks fourteen minutes
Lastly we have on side B “Eating Viscera”. And this track is all about a rapid yet fixed low-end juddering, which has a scraping/ semi cluttering violent jittering around it. This sixteen minute track is ok, and it has a fairly nice urgency about it….but for me it felt like it over stayed it’s welcome by about five or so mintues. Again the textures/tones just didn’t feel engaging over a longer period of time
On the whole I found Eating Guts a rather mixed bag- maybe it’s down to length of the whole release, the focus on the basic & (mostly) one dimensional walls, or the fairly similar sounding ‘walls’. So this certainly isn’t my favourite release by Cannibal Ritual, but it does have it moments, and if you are after no non-sense old school HNW it’s worth a look….I guess if I could I’d give it 2 & a half out of five, but as we don’t deal in half measures I’ll give it a three.