Haloperidol — To Understand Psychosis, One Must Experience It
Here’s a walled noise release that shows the form at its most ragged, raw, and pained. This two-track affair is from Rochester, New York’s Haloperidol- with this being a self-released digital album.
Cover artwork side we get a grim black & white affair, featuring a distressed head scan- with the project's logo being sort of a tangled and wavering static lump. The release can be heard just here.
Going from the projects bandcamp- they seemingly started July of this year, and so far have released just three releases. All of the releases have seemingly suicidal or mental health themes- and this one is about ‘the crushing weight of paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations’- so fitting theme for a ragged ‘n’ disturbing wall.
The release features two tracks- the first of these is “Faceless People Stare and Whisper”, and this takes in the lion's share of the release's runtime at the 23.18 mark. The ‘wall’ is very low-fi and extremely crude quality- it’s built around a forking judder, which has raggedly billowing ‘n’ rattling junk touched low end. As the track goes on we get the occasional slight falter in both elements, which of course nicely intensifies the baying crude-ness of the whole thing. The 'wall' very much feels like being trapped with one own harmful thoughts, as they roll round and round your head- so perfect for the theme of the release.
The second track here is “Prayer for the Afflicted”- and this comes in at the shorter 5.14 mark. This is basically the first track again, but with little more ragged ‘n’ billowing battering touches. It’s ok, but doesn’t add a huge amount to proceedings- and to be honest, I think the release may have worked better if it had just been a single-track affair.
To Understand Psychosis, One Must Experience It rather brings to mind old-school nasty HNW made by the likes of Cannibal Ritual and early Nascitar. So let’s hope they continue in this vein, as there are not enough projects doing plain, simple, and nasty wall crafting.