Lethe — For Blood, For Honour
Lethe is of course one of the main projects of Minneapolis based HNW/ambient artists Cory Strand(runner of the excellent Altar of Waste label, and behind projects such as Lindskold, Necronom IV & self named solo work). The Lethe project started in May 2012, and has so far released 11 releases (many of these multi disc sets)- these releases have gone from hopeless drone, to HNW, to death ambience, to greyed sub-tone studies. This two disc release is based around fairly fixed walled noise that moves from a distorted sludge based attack, to a more billowing & eerier drone/ HNW based track.
Cover design wise this is a bit more minimal & largely monochrome based compared with some of Altar of Waste’s more colourful releases. The double sided cover features black & white drawings from the Turtles comic book appearances, instead of the bright gordy Turtles of the cartoon & film adaptations.
Each of the two tracks here runs just under the hour mark, and each starts with a brief snippet/ sample of the Turtles cartoon theme. Disc one is taken up by “ For Blood”, and this is the more intense/ pummelling of the two tracks here. The ‘wall’ is based around throbbing ‘n’ boring bass bound tone that has a very distorted sludge feel to it. It sounds like some form of effect laden guitar tone is been used to create the track, and it has a very punishing/ vibrate & skull cracking feel to it as Strand feeds first one boring & hellishly vibrating tone after another into your head. The track feels very akin to been attack by one or two low revved chainsaws at the same time, as Strand keeps the tones to at deep purring ‘n’ meaty level.
Disc two is taken up by “For Honour”, and this track is more of vibrating & juddering wall noise/ drone mix. The track is based around an eerier & chilling collection of vibrating & billowing tones which seem to coolly vibrate & bounce around you in a dreamily violent manner. From time to time slowed clanking & crashing textures roll through the track, but most of the time it's very billowing & violently vibrating based.
I can’t stay I was ever a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja comics, cartoons or live action movies, but I must say I did rather enjoy this release as Strand is trying something a little bit different with both of the tracks on offer here.