Gaping Hole Tapes audio stream

All thirty-seven of the Gaping Hole tapes are now available to stream online. Gaping Hole was a sublabel of Scratch and Sniff Entertainment which focused on the nastier side of harsh noise. Since this sublabel got started in 2006, it managed to catch the rising wave of HNW, which was just beginning to make a name for itself as a recognisable subgenre. Hence you'll find a lot of great, classic even, wall and HNW tracks by many of the early masters (Infirmary, Vomir, Cannibal Ritual, Paranoid Time, Last Rape, Piss Horn, Wince, Rusalka etc).

Seriously, there's some properly high-quality walls going on here, and the good news is that, even though the sublabel has folded, you can still find most of these tapes out there. Do yourself a favour.

KEEP HNW BRUTAL!

Cannibal Ritual tribute page

I don't know why I didn't post this sooner, but I've started a Cannibal Ritual tribute bandcamp page. Cannibal Ritual was one of the first projects to fully dedicate itself to monolithic unchanging walls of static noise, i.e. Harsh Noise Wall, and is one of my personal favourite HNW artists. All Cannibal Ritual material was dedicated to cannibal cinema and was suitably brutal, lo-fi and obscure. I'm not sure if all of the CR material was made using an empty turntable as a sound source, but a good deal of it certainly was, and this gave the tracks a great grinding quality and often added a rhythmic element that was properly hypnotising.

The Cannibal Ritual material is not the easiest to get a hold of, for Ronald (Cannibal Ritual) released most of his own material, and quite often did so in very small numbers. The Thirst for Revenge Part II release, which you can hear above, for example, was only an edition of six copies. Furthermore, all of the CR material was on either tape or CDR, neither of which is famed for its durability. In fact, my own personal copies are pretty worn out, which you can actually hear from the rip I uploaded of Brutal Abortion/Fetus Slaughter. And so, for these reasons, I decided to do a tribute site; for to try and hold on to these recordings a little longer, and to try and ensure Ronald's deserved legacy as a master of HNW.

There was talk of a reissue box of tapes on Harsh Fucked for Life (Sweden), but Ronald dropped out of the scene without a word of warning in 2010 and hasn't been seen or heard from since. In fact, now that I think about it, even HFFL has folded. Which is strange, cause I remember when Karl just came on the scene, not long after myself, and not long after that HFFL became a real corner-stone of Euro-HNW. Strange to think. So anyway, needless to say, reissues of the Cannibal Ritual material are now extremely unlikely.

The other thing you need to know about Ronald is that he actually set-up and moderated the first two HNW online forums himself. I knew him only a little from those forums, but enough to know that now he's gone, he's unlikely to return. He really just didn't give a fuck about anything apart from brutal HNW and brutal old school death metal. And by the end, he didn't really care about the former anymore. He was vehemently opposed to all HNW that wasn't brutal as fuck and he used to delete threads and accounts on the forum in a heartbeat if he felt either didn't match his expectations of what HNW should be. He was a bit of a bastard like, but we all loved him for it, and he played a key role in ensuring that part of HNW would always be brutal, elitist and obscure.

The other thing I have to say is that I need some help completing the page. There are lots of Cannibal Ritual releases I don't have, so if ye can, I'd very much appreciate it if ye could send me audio rips and cover scans. I've got a few more things to rip from my collection, mostly tapes, including the excellent Thirst for Revenge tape, but my computer is a bit shite, so until I get that sorted there's unlikely to be more added without help. If ye think ye can help, please get in touch.

So anyway, in the meantime, stick on Cannibal Ferox (Ronald's favourite cannibal film, if I remember correctly), and get onto the bandcamp and turn it up full tilt in honour of an HNW legend.

KEEP HNW BRUTAL!