Stress — Feel The Pain

‘Feel The Pain’ is the second self released cdr from one man Texas based HNW project Stress(aka Casey Duncan). On offer here is one long near on forty minute track that gives the you a shot of boiling & lo-fi stormed wall making.

I quite enjoyed Stress’s first release Channel 0-1, so I was looking forward to playing this and I’ll have to say I’m  more than a  little underwhelmed by the disc as a whole. The first problem is that the volume on the album is very low so you have to pump the volume way-up to get any kind of buzz & enjoyment from the album. Secondly Duncan spins out a fairly bland & common garden noise of wall through-out; sure it’s bearable, you can stick with it till the end & it does have some movement & change in its fairly rapid lo-fi storm roll. But it’s hardly very hypnotic, trance inducing or special; though that said it does improve & becoming a little more muffled judder bound later on.  But even this development does'nt really set the track alight & it leaves you with a rather mundane & bland effort on the whole. Duncan can clearly make rewarding ‘walls’ as shown on ‘Channel 0-1’ , but sadly there’s no or little spark here.

With the Harsh Noise Wall scene growing so fast & rapidly you really need something a little bit different & unequal to stand out from the growing crowd; but I’m afraid to say  ‘Feel the Pain’ has neither of these qualities- better luck next time.