It was released on clear-shell C20's in an edition of twenty on the Minneapolis label Altar of Waste run by Cory Strand. Martin also runs the label Moral Defeat, releasing not only cassettes and zines but also some rarely seen (for the noise scene) vinyl. His label has had a number of great releases from the likes of Macronympha, Black Leather Jesus, Torturing Nurse and Luke Holland among others. This is the very first Body Stress album I have engaged with on this level - previously I have only streamed and skimmed the projects various works, but having had the chance to appropriately engage with this tape I am confident I will have a great time further properly exploring the catalogue.

The first track on side A, "Inception", begins with what sounds like a film sample of a man giving us a journalistic monologue. He is preparing himself, a lo-fidelity wave of synth clouding his words - he "can't just stick tubes up their arses and hope for the best.. no" leads us into a thundering garden of shrill feedback bellowing over shredding and ripping wall noise. There is something very naturalistic about the tone of the static soup at first, like a million crickets singing in the night. I have long been a fan of noise, particularly HNW, that references the sample-drop-into-music formula borrowed from concurrent extreme genres such as death metal and grind. Slowly but surely, the blend of dynamically walled noise and shrill feedback becomes palpably separated - and the distinguishable clunking and shattering of contact mic'd metal seems to glean through. Large swells of sound like an overblown synth chord rain down on the listener as further feedback and squelching undulation also swarm. Only minutes into the full 6-minute runtime of this track, I feel so enveloped and there are so many different sounds from plausibly different sources occurring - this feels very much like one of the most dynamic things you could liken to wall noise, whilst also acknowledging that it certainly comes from a broader noise heritage of cut-up, junk noise and traditionally diverse and spasmodic harsh noise - where you might picture the artist at a long fold-up table full of an outright plethora of pedals.

The second track to side A, 'Wash Over Me', is smaller than the first at 3"45 and in spite of being broken away from the first by a short pause it feels very much like an addendum. Here I feel an even heavier connection and reference to 'cut-up noise', where the break between tracks acts as a rhythmic device of sorts - and a chance for the maniacal beast of sound to change its behaviour organically. A similar assembly of shredding static wall noise underlies wailing high-pitched feedback tones that sing and dance around the clambering, crumbling wall beneath but here there is less time for that movement to become as diverse as in the track preceding it - and so the sounds come to very much represent their namesake and 'wash over' the listener.

For side B we have only one track taking up 9"44 of the ten minutes of tape, "High Colonic". A significantly lower pitch of noise bursts into play as introduction, there is an unmistakable and delicious tape-fidelity which makes the listener believe they are listening to something produced and recorded using tape (rather than something produced digitally and then dubbed), and the sounds feel like they could be heavily compressed loops of field recording - but the very mystique of what's being heard cries out to be left alone and admired as it is - anonymous objects, and perhaps even forces of nature, interact for a short time before the track drops us into the full 'barrage' of the wall. Once again, as stacked and lusciously interplayed as these sounds are, weaving around each other so as to become a swarming mass of sonic activity - the high-pitched wails of feedback soar above and displace it all. This kind of noise is at once noticeably akin to much of the HNW work alongside it on Altar of Waste, whilst also clearly going against some of the 'immersive' and 'monolithic' tendencies highly sought-after in some - preferring instead to cling to the Harsh over the Wall - and attack the listener with a furious flurry that is wall-like in its unrelenting force and yet richly diverse as well.

As with the beginning of the first side of the tape, we come out of our noise tunnel into a light of bumping synth lines as were heard in the tapes opening film sample. This is very clearly from the OST of the film this release is referencing. I have not seen this film, and so I approach these sounds as a curious outsider carefully trying to decipher and infer meaning, but it is these kinds of noise dedications to film works that usually inspire me to discover many films. I have a lot of respect for the long-held tradition within noise to ally itself with the visual medium, and to specifically relate with b-movies, grindhouse and exploitation cinema as having many shared qualities and interests with the art and its artists. Overall, this is a great release - surprisingly full of energy for something as short and sweet as it is.

The label propietor of Altar of Waste, Cory Strand, is currently doing a sale to try and fund future releases and get rid of some of his back-catalogue, so now is a better time than any to stock up on his amazing releases!