Pathos is a new c60/ digital release from France's King of walled noise Vomir. It features two thirty-minute ‘walls’, which very much adheres to the project's crude & unrelenting sound- though on the second track, there are a few slight surprises…though nothing drastic. 

The release appears on Fort Worth’s Hot Fuzz- which is one of the few labels putting out physical releases within the wall noise genre. Seemingly the tape version features a monochrome cover- this takes in a picture of a round shape covered in thin ridges- with some form of text/ manifesto inside. I’m reviewing the streamed version- so I can’t confirm what the texts are. The tape is Ltd to thirteen copies- at present there are a few left, but I can’t imagine these will hang around long. To order directly/ etc drop by here. 

As typical of a Vomir release both tracks here are Untitled. The first track is built around a mixture of flowing mid-range gallop, more rapid chop ‘n’ feast, with a few subtle jolting sub-tones. The main gallop has an almost droning traffic quality- and at points, it seems slightly falter/ waver- but never enough to fully break the ‘walls’ crude rush.

Moving onto the second track. Here we find a thick mid-ranged skating/ ski tone- this is set in a selection of thinner/ smaller rapid sawing ‘n’ filing tones.  With the whole thing underfed by an uneven & slightly wandering faint baying tone. And the early mentioned ‘surprises’ are a few erratic/ brief jolting breaks in the ‘walls’ flow. These happen towards the second half of the track, and when they too they are quite effective, and it’ll be interesting to see if this element gets developed more down the line.

It must be maybe a year, possibly two since I’ve heard/ reviewed new work from Vomir- so as a release Pathos is most, most welcome. And it’s great to see this project that’s now been active since 1996, still releasing rewardingly unforgiven work- when so many wall projects have either stopped or lost focus/ interest in the form. Long live HNW, and long live Vomir!.