Grain Belt – Grain Belt CD

Small Doses, White Centipede Noise, Phage Tapes

Grain Belt appears to be an HNW supergroup composed of the members of Baculum, Willful, and Wince. The sound here is industrial at its basest: extreme squalls of industrial noise with subtle shifts over the span of the album. The pitch here is mostly in the higher range and tends to stay there. The variations in the wall are enough to keep this album engaging and utilize a lot of scrap metal noise. Brief melodic tones in the background add even more to the sound.

While this self titled album sticks mostly to a higher range, the shift to more subtle, bass-y tones comes gradually but tastefully. Scrap metal brutality is matched by strange, psychedelic textures in the background. There are vocals present here and they are straight bone chilling, particularly the howl near the very beginning of the album. Some are more apparent than others; sometimes there will be a wail that’s drowns out the noise and sometimes they will be buried underneath the wall. Overall, though, they add an element that is jarring and even disturbing.

Overall, Grain Belt presents some typical but well done harsh noise wall. The wall moves enough to keep HNW fans satisfied, and then some. Into the middle of the album everything starts to sound like a factory rattling itself apart, as if we the listeners are aural witnesses to a complete industrial collapse.

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