Whore's Breath — Harsh Reality

Harsh Reality is a two-track digital release from this Cincinnati, Ohio-based walled noise project. Each ‘wall’ hits near the twenty-six-minute mark, and each has its own take on grim ‘n’ grinding walling.

The release appears on the project's own label Stemms Audio. For the cover artwork, we get a murky picture of what looks like a ragged and nasty-looking hole in the ground. The release can be found just here. 

The Whore’s Breath project has been active since 2021- releasing around thirty releases to date, most of these being digital. I’ve now heard/ reviewed a fair few of the project's releases, and have largely been impressed by its grimy and often hopeless take on walled noise….and as its title may suggest, this release is another trip into glum ‘n’ unforgiving walling.

First up we have “Granted granite soul” which runs at eighteen seconds over the twenty-seven-minute mark. It’s built around a claggy mixture of steady billowing roast, gritty pop ‘n’ snaps, and slight bone-grinding sub-tones. The ‘wall’ creates a feeling of murky, yet steady oppression- with one's mind spinning with images of stained porcelain, dirt under nails hands, and lankly hung heads with greasy/ shaggy hair. The textures are nicely balanced for both entrancement, and numbing hope pressure.

Next/ finally we have “What We Have Left Behind”- this comes in at eighteen seconds over the twenty-six-minute mark, and here things are pared back somewhat for an even bleaker wall. It’s built around a faint flow of rattling ‘n’ juddering mids, which are topped with a layer of pinprick pops ‘n’ snaps- the second element seemingly getting more persistent as the track progresses.  If the first ‘wall’ was all about oppressive weight, this is crawling hopeless- with one's mind going to images of gaunt and flesh-shrunken human bodies dragging themselves along freezing tiles- with the smell of blood and vomit drifting through the stale & cold air.

Harsh Reality severs us up two well-tooled and well-realized walls- with each being entrancing in its own grim way. Certainly not for those looking for mellow/chill-out wall craft,  but if you're after well-built and effective walling grimness- this will certainly appeal.