Hour of The Wolf — Limited with Coffee

“Limited with Coffee” (it’s ltd to 15 copies, and it’s stained with coffee... so hence the  odd title) finds Hour of the Wolf offering up just over thirty minutes of dense, locked and storm bond noise of the highest and most brutally quality. The project is the one of walled noise projects of highly prolific and creative Norwegian noise head Andreas Brandal’s (Flesh Coffin, Drevne Bolesti, Avmakt, Museums of Sleep), and this is certainly one of my favourite release thus far by Hour of the Wolf.

The last few releases from this project have seen Brandal taking his HNW sound down more layered, shifting and often quite complex textural pathways, but “Limited with Coffee” stays mainly in a fairly locked and un-moving state for most of it’s half an hour running time.  The ‘wall’ roars ‘n’ rages straight in with a rapid and storm bound  yet repetitive mass of sound. With-in a minute or so this first layer of sound is added to by another two layers of textural static, and your truly in unrelenting noise nirvana from here on as Brandal pushers you deeper and deeper into his raging yet highly hpyontic wall of sound.  I guess the best way to describe the track is like been stuck in the middle of an unrelenting snow storm and no matter where you look there’s no defined or hopeful signs….there just roaring and raging whiteness.  Unlike much of Brandal's work there’s nothing really sinister, creepy or horror bound here- it’s just very focused and brutal in its intent, yet extremely engrossing and encasing.  There are some slight textural variations with-in the  ‘wall’ layers as the track moves on, but it never lose it’s firm, thick and unrelenting focus.

So in summing Brandal has built a near perfect storm of textural noise here - it’s overwhelming, searing, hypnotic and very addictive. The only downside is that all of the 15 copies are now  long gone, so those wanting to pick this up will find great difficulties in doing so…let’s hope it’s reissued soon!.