Harsh noise wall

Harsh noise wall, also known as wall noise, noise wall, or HNW, is an extreme subgenre of noise music, described by music journalist Russell Williams as "a literal consistent, unflinching and enveloping wall of monolithic noise".^[1]

Harsh noise wall
Stylistic origins	Noise, harsh noise
Cultural origins	Mid-1990s, United States, Japan, France
Other topics
Japanoise

Harsh noise wall features noises layered together to form a static sound. Harsh noise wall musician Sam McKinlay, also known as The Rita, considered the genre as "the purification of the Japanese harsh noise scene into a more refined crunch, which crystallizes the tonal qualities of distortion in a slow moving minimalistic texture."^[2]

Despite largely staying underground, harsh noise wall has enjoyed a cult following among the noise music scene.

See also

• Avant-garde music