Facialmess/Sleep Sessions – Excessive Force CD

Somnolent Shelter

Fuck yea, it’s been awhile since a harsh noise record really excited me, but this is a pretty incredible pairing of excellent spastic cut-up harsh noise acts. Actually, based on the Sleep Sessions material I have been exposed to before I was expecting longer tracks but I can settle for the merely 12 minutes of his material that this split offers because it’s heavy as fuck and unrelenting with an excellent array of sounds.

Facialmess is up first though and offers roughly 20 minutes of excellent harsh noise mixed with moments of ambience. Some of these moments include simple bass guitar strumming with reverberating industrial backdrops, ambient hums, and cymbal shifts. My only gripe here is that the quiet and loud parts don’t really flow together too well, but that aspect also follows suit to the rest of the spastic and disconnected sounds. The textures and noises on the part of both acts here are clear and concise with razor sharp edges and blunt force trauma.

Sleep Sessions kicks things off with a true crime sample then leads into a brutal array of sounds similar to Facialmess but with less ambient interludes. There are some really great looped moments especially at the beginning of Wasted Efforts and some interesting track titles like Full-Spectrum Dominance and Raped by a Cop.

Both acts offer extremely harsh yet creative sounds along with twists and unexpected turns in their tracks. They also each provide just a touch of atmosphere to add an element that is somewhat reminiscent of earlier Pedestrian Deposit. Definitely a great pairing here with excellent execution. Worth mentioning is the classy design job on this bad boy as well.

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