Wallmart,Inanition,& Exacerbator — 3 For HNW!

3 For HNW! Is a three-way noise split, bringing together two US projects and one rather mysterious project. The tracks featured run between five minutes and just over half an hour.

I’m reviewing the digital download version of the release-the cover art is a fairly bright/ busy collage affair, taking in the US flag, weird faces, pinched hands, teeth/ lips/ etc.

So we open with a track from Massachusetts's Wallmart entitled “Retail Retaliation“. This runs at just over fifteen and a half minutes. It’s built around a blend of a constantly bass-reeling and jittering ‘n’ juddering static hack. It’s a nice head-drill/ suffocating start to split, and it ends with a nice jarring mix of electro hiss/ sample regarding the closure of several supermarkets. I’d not heard anything from this project in a few years, so it’s good to hear they are still producing work

Next we have a track from the rather mysterious Inanition…again I’ve not heard/ reviewed anything from this project in a while. The track here is “cliché of farce”, and runs at just over the thirty-one-minute mark. This ‘wall’ is built around a constant purring / juddering bass tone- and ever so often a mid- to higher-pitched electro jittering/ combs comes off it. It’s a fairly simple, but damn effective ‘wall’ and I’d say it’s my favourite of the tracks here.

Next we have three shorter tracks from Exacerbator- this, I believe, is the first material I’ve heard from the LA-based project. Going from its Bandcamp page, the project has been active since 2022- with around eighteen other releases to its name, so not very prolific at all by wall noise standards. The first track is the just over thirteen-minute “Don’t Let ‘erm Sleep”; it’s a blend of steadily rolling bass tone and rapidly shunting static grain. It’s an effectively lumbering ‘wall’- which is rather moreish in its intent. Next is “A Prize For Murders”, which comes in at dead on the quarter of an hour mark. It’s a mix of stabbing/slightly streaching bass tone, with chopping, buffeting, unfed by light static fuzz. Then lastly we have “Slimy Residue” which sits at the five-minute mark. Here we have a more bared back/ lo-fi ‘wall’ bringing together looped billow with churning ‘n’ swirling small tone gritty swirl. All in all, I enjoyed all three of the Exacerbator tracks- so I’ll most certainly be check out some of the other work.

All told 3 For HNW! Is a consistent wall noise split- it was great to hear new material from the first two projects, and it was nice to check out stuff from a project I’d never heard of before