Vomir/Corporal Abuse — Split
The pro-pressed CDR comes in a monochrome sleeve- this features on its front a picture of one of Vomir’s creepy dungeon love dolls with a pentagram around its neck- with both projects names givien a blacked metal logo like a do-over in the other side of the cover. Inside we find an even more creepy love doll pictures, and track credits- the release appears on Cracra Records, who are a French label who focuses more on noisegrind, goregrind, and noisecore. The release comes in a physical edition of twenty-five copies, and as of writing this review the label still has copies available.
First up we have the Vomir track, which like much of his output is Untilted- this comes in at the nineteen minutes and twenty-second mark. As you’d expect from Vomir we get very much set & unchanging wall noise with this track, though I was kind of surprised by the slightly thinner feel to the tracks layer make-up, as normally the 'walls' are thick & crude as hell from this project. The is ‘wall’ built around a blend of choppy rushing and cluttering billowing- with slight sub-tone detail of snapping churning & hissing pour. In the past I've compared some of Vomir's walled noise to the sound of crudely spurting & spluttering sewage- here the vibe is much more of an amassed & lashing waterfall, with none of the more murky or nasty undertones you’d normally expect- so quite a surprise. The wall its self is compelling in it’s fixed & searing wet lashing quality- and it’ll be interesting to see if this more clean & unfettered take on wall craft will continue or this is just a one-off experiment.
Next we of course we have Corporal Abuse track this is entitled "Journey", which is the longer of the two tracks coming in at the twenty minutes twenty seconds. This project has been active since 2001- and according to Discogs only has around ten release- though they do have a Bandcamp page which mentions a few others- so there seems to be a discrepancy. Anyway, the track here I guess is best described as blunt rushing & baying noise drone with moments of layer shift- compared with the Vomir track it feels very simple & numbing in its attack. To start with we have a blend of flapping gallop, searing rush, and baying slide and twist –this is unfolded over the length of the track in a relatively flat & dull manner, sure from time to time one noise drone drops out- but it just all feels a little one dimensional & unskilled to my ears…almost as if a non-wall artists decided to wall- but doesn’t know what there doing. At around the midway point, we get a sudden run of metallic drums, which gives an effective jarring feel- but sadly this is the only moment that departs from the rather bland feel of the track
So in finishing this release is very much a classic example of a decidedly mixed noise split- the Vomir track was kind of a slightly different take on wall matter and nicely entrancing. And the Corporal Abuse is just a little too run-of-the-mill, and under-whelming….all making it difficult to score- if this had just been the Vomir I’d have given this a 4, and if it had been just given it a 1, maybe 2- so I’ll give it a 3 score.