Vomir — Live From The Catacombs

Live From The Catacombs is a new release from the French king of crudely unrelenting and battering walled noise Vomir. It recently appearing on Us noise label Deathbed Tapes- as either a C22, or digital download- with the release taking in two ten-minutes slices of nihilistic ‘n’ nasty HNW.

The physical version of the release came as a black shelled cassette in a black-on-black Norelco case, that’s present inside a plastic bag with a mock-up news headline about Vomir on its front cover. I can’t comment further than the above description, as we were sent just a digital promo for review, and sadly now the tape has now fully sold out, though you can still download it here.

Featured here are two untitled tracks- one on each side of tape- and these each roll in at a few seconds over the ten-minute mark. The first track finds a shadowy and bluntly muffled drone undercarriage been topped with a rapid and raging selection of juddering ‘n’ jittering mid-ranged static. The drone creates a nice feeling of numb suffocation- which your ears keep trying to grab onto and define, and the static elements nice blend and blur together to create an effectively rushing presence. The whole track pins you down from the very , not giving up or let your up for a breather until it’s over.

Moving onto track number two, and here we find a murky and ill-defined low end hover- this is edged with layers of cluttering ‘n’ descending rattle. The low end has rather a grimly hazed industrial quality about its constantly pressing murk, while the rattle nicely raging and bays into itself. This second track feels slightly more rough, ready- but it's equally rewarding in its ill-defined attack.

There is a reason why Vomir has remained a firm and constant presence in the walled noise scene, when so many other acts have either faded into obscurity or total has given up the craft.  His 'wall' work has always remained distinctly battering in its nihilistic focuses, yet each wall is clearly crafted/ designed to hook the lister in, and more often than not play some effective sonic tricks with the listeners' mind.  Live From The Catacombs is yet another sonic brick in the truly huge and seemingly unstoppable discography of Vomir- and it once again severs up two banteringly rewarding examples of the form, in a way this French project can only do…often imitated, but never beaten in the crude-yet entrancing HNW stakes!.