Wallmaster — You Exist For Nothing Vol 1

Wallmaster is a Montreal, Québec based HWN project that creates a dense & unforgiving take on walled–noise. The project came about in mid 2013, and has been highly prolific putting around twenty digital only releases, and nine or so cassette releases. This C90 tape appears on the projects own label in a edition of 10 copies, and was the first of the ‘You Exist For Nothing’ series which has now reached vol 6.

The unlabelled tape comes in a plastic cassette case, which features a single sided photo paper PC printed cover which takes in images of decaying flesh hung skulls & dead bodies. Visually the whole release has a very grim, gory & old school HNW feel to, and sonically the two side long ‘walls’ inside follow a similar path too.

Both of the two tracks here are untitled, and the first ‘wall’ jumps right in with a extremely muddy ‘n’ sludgy mixture of muffled billowing, juddering & cluttering noise matter- the  tones  here are focused towards a low-to-mid range.  All of the textures  & their patterns are extremely simplistic, and they really run into one another in a very crude, murky & undefined manner, giving the whole ‘wall’ a  extremely lo-fi & necro feel. The ‘wall’ remains full & fairly firm through-out its full forty five minute runtime- there are the odd subtle shifts with-in the layers of the ‘wall’, but these are really fairly minimal & all of the  noise textures have a fairly similar tonall range.  On the whole I was impressed with the really raw, crude & nasty sound of this track, but sadly the ‘wall’ textures themselves were a bit too simplistic for there own good, meaning my attention started to slip well before the mid-way point.

Flipping over the side B, and the ‘wall’ on offer here is a lot more rapid, enraged & battering. It’s built around several juddering & jittering static tones, which are under fed by a muffled & buried billowing. Once again the sound is very lo-fi & crude, but more intense due to the more angered & rapid textures/ focus. Also again the textures used are fairly simplistic & firm in their unfold, but due to the more raging feel the track certainly managers to keep my attention better.  As well  I do detect a few more interesting textural shifts along the tracks length too - for example around the 15 minute mark we get these off pattern jerks & darts of texture coming out of the main rapidly juddering ‘n’ jittering ‘wall’. On the whole I’d say this is definitely my favourite of the two sides here, and I can see myself playing this side again.

So in summing up the release- I enjoyed the great muddy & necro production through-out both tracks.  Sadly side ones track was a little too simplistic & unmemorable in it’s unfold to hold my attention, but the second side was much more effective in it’s intense & rapid continual raging. All in all this is passable  effort  from wallmaster, and if you enjoy old-school, simplistic, lo-fi & nasty walled noise that's in a similar vein to the likes of Cannibal Ritual this is worth a look.