Gnashing of Teeth / Static Goat — Nighthymns
Each act offers up three tracks a piece, and each of these last between the five to twenty two mintue mark. As always with Altar Of Waste releases the CDR comes in a clear DVD case, which features a doubled sided cover. On the front cover we get a lo-fi/ crude drawing of a multi limbed, eyed, mouth & toughed demon. And on inside cover we get a reproduction of a canvas painting that takes in a sky filled with many razor toothed mouths, tentacles & eyes- all told a suitable grim & darkly deranged cover for this blacked brain fuck of a release.
So opening up the release we have three tracks from Gnashing Of Teeth. First of these is “Flight Ov Thee Nightgaunts”, which I guess is fairly structured & sane, compared with what is to follow. The tracks built around a super lo-fi blend of screaming ‘n’ growling vocals, that are under fed by a very overloaded & feedback seared mix of : manic/seemingly shapeless crashing drums, speeding up ‘n’ slowing down guitars, and swirls of wavering/ haunting yet damaged female vocalising.
Next we have “Haunters Ov Thee Dark I”, and this open up fairly structured yet extreme murky, damaged & stark soup of: bayed ‘n’ hoarsely screamed vocals, battering & condensed feed back seared drums, and mid paced thin guitar element- which is playing a difficult to discern riff, and the whole thing is moulded into ear slicing yet slightly bouncing noise haze. By around the 3rd minute the pace slows to wiry scald, and spoken word occult tinged ritual female vocals are added to the mix, along with a mass of reverb/ feedback which seems to be slowly(but surely) damaging the tracks structure more & more. At the 5th minute a wonky & warped harpsichord element is added into the mix weaving out a creepy melody, but before it can have any impact the whole track just falls into a noisy ‘n’ necro collapse of : screeching guitar, clouds of messily reverb drenched noise, and echoed male ‘n’ female vocals.
Track three comes in the form of “Haunters Ov Thee Dark I”, and this lurches in with a starkly lo-fi yet searing mix of: slicing shape-less guitar scald, rapid guitar neck scuttling, searing reverb licked noise tones, and demonic male talking- whic is all fed into a head-fucking & blackly staggering mass of sound. By around the 4th minute a more theatrical voiced male voice appears, spout blacked like pronouncements & demonic metal chat…but fairly soon this is shifted into bayed 'n garbled distorted mess, which ever so often shifts back to theatrical spoken word. At the 7th minute we get random & careering drum crashers, female moans/ screams added to this mix, and from time to time this more darkly dramatic almost eastern tinged melody tries to break through- but the blacked noise shimmer, grate, and swirl keeps taking over and pulling the whole thing into shapeless yet satisfying noisy overload. In the tracks last minute or so the whole things breaks down into a garbled mess of barking, bay & overloaded vocal sounds.
Now we move onto the Static Goat tracks, and first of these is “Thousand Hooves, Thousand Young - Invocation I”. And after the stark, messy & overloaded blacked joy of Gnashing Of Teeth material- this track moves into a brain twisted blacked yet highly psychedelic noise trip which blends together: wavering ‘n’ melted electro tone swirls, buried & bent sways of clamouring drums & metallic riffs, harsh noise pitch bends, wonky/ melted harmonic ups ‘n’ down, guttural laugher, twitching acid tinged siren scalds. Really there is little point trying to chart out what goes on in this track, as it's shifting ‘n’ swirling all the time- but trust me, this is track guaranteed to derange & unbalance you.
Next is “Flight Ov Thee Nightgaunts”, which opens with a mix of rapidly chopping & tentacle like lashing noise tones- fairly soon we get creepy soundtrack music, and spoken word theatrical Lovecraft like texts- but really you can’t make too much out, as everything is so overloaded & noised up. Fairly soon the creepy soundtrack/ spoken word elements dissipate, and we shift into a more brain screwing sonic meltdown - which brings together: tolling ‘n’ lashing searing drones, caustic swirling & cascading noise matter, and searing psychedelic matter.
Lastly we have “Invocation II”, and this starts out promising with a mixture plodding ‘n’ melting overloaded synth grind ‘n’ waver, searing ‘n’ baying noise swirls, and feed back seared mass of psychedelic tone texturing. By around the 5th minute human wails & screams, along with skittering guitar harmonics are added to the mix, and we slide into another overloaded brain fuck, that’s tipped with these melting synth chops ‘n’ descends. At around the 10th minute it all cuts back to a slightly northern English sounding man telling a tale about Norse gods( or something) with swirling lo-fi wind noises on top…and frankly this part of the track is just rather boring and tiresome- the story the man is telling is full of long names & bland tale telling, and the wind effects feel rather rudimentary & uninteresting. The rest of the tracks 11 or so mintues plays out with just the story & wind sounds.
So to sum up for the most part Nighthymns is a darkly demented & psychedelic searing brain fry. It’s just a pity the second half of the last Static Goat track drops into bland/ unrewarding spoken word story telling, as you leave the release feeling rather bored, instead of feeling brain fucked.