Review Summary: Screams of the damned.
Bitcrushed, distorted noise. Brooding dark ambience, all with a touch of sampled screaming to balance the dish out. Hypoxyphilia doesn't want to spook you, but outright disturb you. When this album is firing at all cylinders, it's a genuinely haunting atmosphere. But, as implied, it does drag on.
So, let's focus on the best part: the first half of the tape, or the first 20 minutes. The tracks here are varied and well executed, breaking up harsh noise with dark ambience, or combining the two together. Drained of Empathy does a good job at combining all of the album's assets into one song, as does Wasteland. The power electronics influence is apparent through its presentation and samples. If the samples of screaming and the like isn't as sparse as it is, It would be more than uncomfortable to listen to.
But onto the second half: the title track. It’s 20 minutes of harsh noise with very little variation, with a similar effect that harsh noise wall elicits. It’s only in the last few minutes or so that changes in feedback and noise are put in. Some may like that, but for my tastes it only pads out the album, and it feels like Hypoxyphilia needed to fill up the other side of the cassette. No samples, no ambience, but one-note harsh noise.
It’s close to being excellent, but it seems like it needed more time to be worked on. It’s a strange thing to say for a harsh noise release, as most noise artists are one member and release everything independently. The second half is void of the ideas of the first, and suffers for it. It’s still at least worth a listen for this time of year.
Recommended Tracks: Wasteland, Manifestation, Written in Blood.
