Cannibal Ritual — Punishment of the Yacumos

Long-running German, HNW act Cannibal Ritual presents 2 new walls on Punishment Of The Yacumos. After years of dormancy, this act has resurfaced with a flurry of new releases on HNW staples Vagary and Claustrophilia as well as this new release on net label Meat Hook Butchery. As evident by the project’s moniker, Cannibal Ritual creates grim, static walls based on Italian Cannibal films. You can almost listen to the pieces present on Punishment Of The Yacumos as twisted alternative scores to such classics as Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox.

Punishment of the Yacumos offers 2 tracks of unchanging, focused wall noise. As soon as the title track commences, I can already tell I’m going to enjoy this piece. It’s a winding corridor of wall-riding just the way I like it. The wall consists of ostensibly 2 chains: A chain of granular static and another chain of dense, bassy rumble. The recording itself sounds really muddy and lo-fi, but I rather like it that way. The wall travels at a mid paced speed throughout it’s 13 ½ minute duration with no discernable changes to it’s character. I perhaps would’ve like the crackle to be slightly more accentuated as it’s subdued by a heavy blanket of deep thudding bass. However, that’s really splitting hairs as I really enjoyed the track through to its entirety.

Track 2, Ritual Punishment Pt.2,  offers a vigourous, crispy flurry of static colliding with another thick line of bass rumbling. The rumbling feels a bit more spaced apart on this side, so the static is a little more present. It’s a meatier wall running nearly 21 minutes, which gives the listener a bit more time to immerse themselves into the piece.

Overall, 2 satisfying slices of focused wall riding. The overall lo-fi and muddy sounds of the recording only makes things grimier...scummier, but that’s music ...err anti-music to my ears. Looking forward to more releases from this project in the near future.