Dead Body Collection — Catoptrophobia
The packaging/ artwork for this release is probably one of the most pro-looking yet bloody of DBC’s near on sixty releases thus far. The artwork is full colour pro-printed and comes with a two page booklet in a jewel case. The front, back and internal artwork features movie like stills of a women laying on the floor of a shower- on the first picture her head is semi-severed, on the second picture it's completely severed & spurting blood from it’s stump, and the last back picture is of the sprawled decapitated body half in the blood drenched shower stall. The albums title is the word for fear of mirrors, so fittingly all the albums texts are back to front which is quite a neat idea, through you can only read the words of course if you have a mirror to hand.
So lets move onto the single fifty five minute track with-in. The ‘wall’ rams straight in with a truly scorching, raging & bass bloody mixture of juddering, stuck grating and drilling static. It feels like ones trapped inside some archaic & sadistic torture machine in the middle of a desert sand storm at the height of it’s devastating & disorientating powers. DBC lets the ‘wall’ batter, rip and boil away at you in fairly fixed & unbreakable manner, through there is the odd subtle textural shifts with-in the walls layers ever so often- like towards the end of the track this haunting & ebbing piercing harmonic drone darts & melts through the ‘wall’ for a few minutes, but really there are no big or noticeable changes through the ‘walls’ life . The only real major breaks or changes in the proceedings happens at just under the 15 minute mark when the ‘wall’ sudden stops for a second or two, and when it returns it seem slightly altered. And the other alteration appears around the just before the thirty minute mark where the ‘wall’ thins back for a moment for a few pained screams- this moment is quite effective & adds a bit unnerving contrast to the ‘wall’
“Catoptrophobia” is another truly unrelenting and extreme lesson in noise at it’ most intense, thick & raging form. Sure if you’re a fan of the project you’ll get what you expect here brutal & unflinching HNW, but if your new to the DBC your in for one extreme & head boiling ride.