PERSISTENCE IN MOURNING / VOMIR split CASSETTE (Ominous Silence)
A killer limited-edition cassette that delivers some new tracks of demented, diseased, meandering sludge from Persistence In Mourning, and a lengthy new track of crushing distortion-trance from the French master of HNW, Vomir.
The first side has Persistance In Mourning, an American funereal doom outfit who has had a couple of releases on Universal Tongue and At War With False Noise; they offer up three tracks of miserable, bass-heavy doom crawl, influenced by classic death/funereal doom like Thergothon and Evoken, but with some noisy, electronic elements incorporated into their sound. The beginning of the first track "We Are The Lost" is a rumbling sorrowful bass line winding through pools of grit and fuzz and dissonant minor key guitar, the drums totally absent at first, surrounded by harsh, wretched screams. Then the drums drop in, glacial and massive, along with some sung vocals backed by those blackened shrieks, and it starts to sound a little like some suicidal doom cover of a Sebadoh song, super heavy and utterly morose, but also strangely pretty. That's followed by a cover of "Epoch Of Denial" by Dutch death metallers Sinister, here transformed into something infinitely slower and more oppressive, and bathed in squealing electronics and hissy distortion. Strange backwards spoken word and fluttering 8-bit electronic gunk squirms right into the last song "Stinking Of Fever", a mass of gritty noize flux and ghastly guitar chords floating in filth, demonic reverse voices, the whole thing really abstract, a mysterious fractured soundscape; eventually, the guitar coalesces into a simple melody rising high above the murky chaos, then the heaviness flows in, a massive slow moving doom riff drifting disembodied as distorted, power electronics style vocals echo and reverberate overhead, a strange mix of funereal, somber doom and electronic detritus, but again, strangely pretty...
On the other side of the cassette, Vomir (as usual) completely flattens the brain with a single eighteen minute track of crushing, pitch-black harsh distortion avalanche, a seemingly endless pulverizing maelstrom of bone-splintering bottom end and swirling black magma that rolls over you without pause. There's a massive bass presence on this track, a monstrous grinding low end throb beneath the crunch and scrape and roar, and it almost sounds as if incredibly distorted and over-modulated demonic voices are speaking from within the heart of the nuclear storm. Fans of the French wall-master will not be disappointed...this is one of Vomir's more terrifying slabs of HNW annihilation.
The tape comes in a cool understated package: it's enclosed in a black fold-over cardstock case that's held together with a Velcro clasp, and includes a full color double sided insert card, each copy hand-numbered in an edition of 100 copies.
