Eugene Critchley — Hell Awaits

Eugene Critchley is a longstanding project from Cory Strand, the brains and body behind the celebrated Altar of Waste label; the once uber-prolific Strand has been quieter of recent, or at least entered my line of vision less, and this tape is a welcome sight. The cassette comes in a wee bag, with a glorious inlay featuring adapted art from the cover of a certain Slayer album. Although I consider myself to be a huge fan of Slayer, I’ll admit to not knowing their earliest albums very well - I doubt I’ve even heard Reign In Blood in the last five years - consequently I can’t comment on how precisely the Eugene Critchley tracks relate to Slayer’s Hell Awaits album, but they are strong enough to stand alone regardless.

The first track, ‘THESE DREAMS WILL CONSUME,’ begins with a lengthy sample from the film Dragged Across Concrete, and it is lengthy - probably around seven minutes long. After a while a low drone becomes noticeable, and then glacially creeps up into the mix. This continues bare and unadorned until another lengthy sample appears, ending the track, and the second piece, ‘HELL AWAITS,’ follows the same half hour long path. The drones are glacial in the sense that they are monolithic, but actually they’re quite agitated in terms of speed; there are fluctuations and movements but both tracks are ‘static,’ put in HNW terms. Indeed, whilst I have referred to the tracks as ‘drones’ they really navigate a course between HNW and drone; in material terms they sound like surging walls with the treble, crackle, and distorted elements removed, leaving only the bass frequencies. Thus they are solid and brooding, but also airy and open. This is a release where volume can be adjusted to radically change the effects of the listening experience; played loudly Hell Awaits is a suffocating, brute block in the room, played quietly it delicately colours the space, a near inaudible presence. Volume is therefore an important consideration, but it is also complicit in perhaps my only criticism of the tape. It’s not a fair criticism as I’m not entirely sure where the problem lies, but the issue is simply that playing Hell Awaits at what I feel is an appropriate volume renders the bookending samples slightly illegible (I think the opening sample of the second track comes from the Mindhunter series, but the other two samples remain a mystery right now); raising the volume so that said samples can be followed almost makes the drones feel ‘too’ loud - and dangerously loud in that the stereo feels cranked. I don’t know whether this is a deliberate decision in mixing, or a result of an imperfect dub, or perhaps some idiosyncrasy regarding my stereo, but in practice it means that the samples are reduced to somewhat buried, overheard conversations - though, again, this is not necessarily a bad thing aesthetically. The concept of using very long samples is brilliant, making them integral partners in the music rather than introductory decoration. They establish an unhurried, meditative pace completely befitting the thick, encroaching drones that follow and precede.

Despite my criticisms, this is an excellent release. You could lazily label it Dark Ambient, but that genre often feels a little ‘user-friendly’ to me, often relying on huge reverbs and eerie tropes. Hell Awaits has none of these; instead it feels genuinely cold and alien, unforgiving to the listener. This unease is added to by its refusal to be neatly pigeonholed, driving a line precisely between wall noise and drone, and never swerving. As I have said, my experience of Hell Awaits wasn’t perfect, but given that this could be a technical issue it would be unfair to direct this at Eugene Critchley. So, an interesting and provocative release…