The Man Who Drove The Hearse — The Lethal Temple IV: "No Bolts, No Locks, Could K
The Man Who Drove The Hearse is a part of a collective of four projects with the subtitle of The Lethal Temple- we have A Woman’s Glove(from Scott Kindberg), Forests Of Brittany(from Thomas Pupolo), and Pallid Mask (from Sean .E.Matzus) with each been themed around a different story from The King in Yellow. And each putting out their debut releases in days of each other- so a very neat idea/ concept.
The Man Who Drove The Hearse project is themed on the 4th story in the collection The Yellow Sign, which tells of Tessie an artist who is troubled by visions/ dreams of a sinister churchyard hearse drive who has a face and body like a graveyard maggot.
The tape had an edition of 18 copies, and sadly these have all gone now. The plain black shelled tape comes in a single-sided cover with a black & creepy mustard yellow colour scheme, on the front cover we have an eerier picture of a horse-drawn hearse, and inside small yellow text against a black background.
Each side of the tape features a single track, with the first track been entitled “His Face So Soft and White”. We open with a short snippet of horse & carriage sounds, before dropping into a blend of a muffled 'n' hovering choppiness and a constantly tolling low-end piano hit. In around a minute & a half the piano elements drops out, and we’re left with a manic-though- no less creepy mixture of hovering choppiness & nervy rattle. Towards the end of the track the grimly tolling piano returns once more to great effect.
Flipping over and we have “It looked as if it been Dead For Long To Time”. Here we find a mixture of constantly skating 'n' slicing static element with a muffled & dragged selection of loose junk like clatters, grates & spins. Once again the track has is nicely atmospheric, and at points, quite eerier, though with a more hazed & old school industrial vibe to the whole thing.
All in all, I’m most, most impressed with both sides of this tape- and I do hope there is more The Man Who Drove The Hearse releases down the line, and I’ll be certainly be checking out the other three projects in the collective too. If you like atmospheric & creative textured noise-making No Bolts, No Locks, Could Keep That Creature Out is a must!