Vargrwulf — House of Seven Gallows+ The Kitchen Knife Murders

So many artists just refuse to have downtime.  Vargrwulfs Joseph Gates falls into this category.  He not only is the creator of Vargrwulf but is involved with many projects such as Peiiste, Slaughter-Fetus and L’Exorcisme.  Add to that the two tape labels he founded; Violent Revolution International and Human Ignorance and you have one busy individual.

Our concern here though is Vargrwulf.  House of Seven Gallows + The Kitchen Knife Murders gives us one track of Harsh Wall Noise for a delightfully painful 56 minutes. Yet as harsh as it is (a little excruciating at times) the project also veers into drone territory to boot.

Overwhelmingly it is a combination of relentless static combined with oppressive, sputtering noise.  The sensations that Vargrwulf constructs run the gamut from claustrophobic and disconnected to agonizing and numb.  Once the initial shock of noise eventually subsides and the intermittent sputtering loses its momentum it oddly enough becomes a background noise.  Imagine leaving the television on too late when all you hear is static and that pretty much describes what we ultimately hear. 

It’s a subtle subliminal sleight of hand we’re given.  Start with a din loud and unbearable and well, harsh.  After our senses are pummeled into submission, until we don’t even notice the noise anymore the sounds lull to what seems to be an assembly of static.  Yet it is still the same harsh noise we’ve been subjected to since the start.  Clever, perhaps a bit long but the impact is there