Humanfobia - Carrie White Burns in Hell (B-Sides)

 

Released: November 20

Carrie White Burns in Hell is a dark and sinister sounding album from Chilean electronic duo Humanfobia. When I first heard the album, I only realized after the fact that I had actually only heard the b-sides album and not the original. And, while both are excellent, I enjoyed the b-sides a bit more than the original simply because of the pacing. The original is much more rhythmic, noisy, loud and distorted; which are all things that I love. But the b-sides has this slow and languid quality to that stuck with me much harder. It feels incredibly surreal as agonized pads drift around the soundscape, setting a vibe that feels a lot like a bad trip. Along with these tortured pads, there are the samples pulled directly from the movie the album is inspired by, Carrie (1976). The only place these sample show up is the first track, which is also the most rhythmic and noisy track on the album. 

The whole album just feels so wonderfully creepy altogether and frequently leans into this horror movie meets vaporwave vibe in various ways. On the third track, “Blood of Carrie White,” there’s a very simple and rudimentary rhythm playing on primarily on a single snare as the eerie vocals from singer Mist Spectra ring out in the shadowy scape with an almost backmasked quality to them, ringing out in reverse. “Floating Objects” takes the pads of what you might hear in a generic 1980s commercial and subverts them with an unsettling alarm tone, squawking out and keeping things weird. The final track is the closest we come to a purely ambient track, but it doesn’t the listener to rest. The slightly “off” tonality makes it feel rather uncomfortable. These tones coalesce into something that is genuinely off-putting. It’s a rather innovative all around that captures the tone and aesthetic of a classic piece of horror cinema.