Nightmare Castle — Potential Psycho
Nightmare Castle normally focus most of their releases in on old horror movies, bloody figures from history, or old horror characters. And their ‘walls’ normally focus in on crusty ‘n’ dusty textures, which are fed out into dense ‘n’ fixed wall work-outs, which have quite a monochrome feel to them. With Potential Psycho, there’s a more grinding ‘n’ urgent bass bound feel to the proceedings, and there’s less of a ‘horror’ theme present- in both the ‘wall’ & the releases fairly minimal sleeve artwork(which takes in what looks like overly exposed photographs)
The track on offer here comes in at the 57.34 mark, and it opens up with a very brief few second sample of a man saying “I think he’s a potential Psycho”- apparently it’s taken from tacky subterranean monster themed 1963 movie The Slim People, but really due to it’s brief-ness you wouldn’t know where it’s from….so it doesn’t really give the track any sort of sc-fi/horror vibe( we get an even more brief film sample at the end of the track, with a male voice saying “lying & dying in his own blood”, but equally this doesn’t make any impression on the vibe of the track). When the ‘wall’ kicks in it’s centred around this dense, deep & punishing bass drilling tone, and coming off from this main tone are a few muffled jittering ‘n’ juddering sub-textures. The central tone sort fixers in on this relenting pattern, which really seems to drill deep through your ears & into your brain. The sub-tones add a nice urgent yet slightly wonky edge to proceedings, as they batter ‘n’ buffet around the main tone. The interesting & capvating thing about the track is ever so often the ‘wall’ keeps falling into this dipping ‘n’ wavering like effect, which rather brought to mind the sound of a worn tape that’s on the edge of unreeling. All told it’s a most entrancing yet intense track, that keeps you focused & pinned down through-out
I must admit I was more than a little underwhelmed by the last release I’d heard from this project- Blind Dead( a three CDR set on Germanys Vomit Bucket Productions themed around the Spanish Blind Dead series of movies). But I’m happy to report that Potential Psycho finds the project back on fine punishing & hypnotic form with a great brain mincing slice of bass bound walled noise.