Nighttime In The Abyss — People For the Ethical Treatment of Abominations
Nighttime In The Abyss is Columbia Missouri based project that has been in existence since October 2012. Behind the project is one Alocer Christus, who seemingly creates everything with-in the projects dense, dark & disorientating sound. According to the discog listing the project has thus far put out six or so releases, but as the release I have in hands isn’t listed there I suspect there are a few more releases too.
The just over fifty minute track starts out with a mix of: the spoken word dialogue of a male American, sustained & unsettling buzzing drone matter, & more echoed layers of the same male American voice. Then slowly but surely the sound picture starts to get more densely damaged & disortating, as we get added in darts of: animal noise & pig grunts, melted & wavering hymns, & guttural voices.
By around the 7th minute we are surrounded by now the completely incoherent spoken word elements- that are slowly been morphed further & further into strange melted & demonic chatter. Along with these are:a sustained & piercing single point drone, shifting/ darkly malevolent sonic clouds of hovering synth tone, subtle ‘n’ unsettling noise elements, and layers of other disorienting sound matter. As the track carries on it all starts to get more blurred, and darkly undefined as Christus melts & distils out the original elements to a really unsettling hazed sound soup.
Around the 27th minute things drift back to a mix of slowed & reversed voices, and a single spoken word element of the original male American voices again,and this times it sounds more pressing, authoritative & darkly dangerous. Then as the spoken word element disappears once again we drift into a mix of screams, calls, and bays that are mixed with the slurred backward voices elements, and it's as if we are hovering above the gates to hell it’s self. After a bit we drift once more to thinner & less defined darkly hazed matter, then around the 35th minute things seem to get more blackly urgent & darkly accelerating as waves of more taut & powerful (slightly noise dipped) drone matters comes towards you in pressing waves of sound. Before long the whole thing once again turns into a chilling & undefined blacked ritual sound soup, with a slightly more spectral vibe going on as the track final fades out.
“People For the Ethical Treatment of Abominations" really felt like an mixture of inverse self-help tapes(self unhinge tapes maybe?), recordings from some strange & deranged séance , and the sounds of an unsettled mind swimming through it’s own hell. I guess if you had to try & label what Mr Christus has created here you’d say it’s a mix of subtle dark noise & black ambience, but really that description doesn’t really do it justice. Certainly this is another blackly singed sonic curio from Altar Of Waste, and well worth a look if you enjoy dark & murky sonic matter that really fucks with your head.