Review Summary: Our tongues and hands will be reclaimed by dirt
Having been slowly but surely filtering out all semblance of hardcore since their groovy debut Savages, Full Of Hell's performance on 2011's Roots Of Earth Are Consuming My Home was really their defining statement as a more developed outfit. Churning out blast beat-laden grindcore with delicious helpings of noise and many a memorable riff, the four piece's embrace of Converge-esque intensity easily rivalled bands with a much larger amount of exposure such as Nails.
Definitely a unique outfit in the overpopulated genre of Entombed-core, any semblance this band may initially have to one like Trap Them or Code Orange (cheesy lyrics and boring breakdowns) is brutally cut out and replaced with abrasive noise that seeks to alienate any listeners unaccustomed with the genre's harsh, very un-musical approach to creating sound. The noise sections, however, are the least interesting elements of this record. With a vocal performance fit to rival any band you can name in the extreme metal underground, this thing leaps from At the Gates style shrieks to ominous spoken word to bestial growls that 90% of the time succeed in not sounding cliche in any way. It's amazing the band can even keep up with how fast the vocalist changes his pace, and he sounds comfortable over almost any modem of sound, be it sharp-as-razors riffs, fat, bulging bass, or distorted feedback like on opener Dichotomy, where an insane rant is unleashed leading into the escalating madness of a re-recorded Vessel Deserted.
Occasionally, the vocals can get a little tiresome, and when accompanied solely by nothing but noise can start to become more of a burden to the album's flow. For example, Embrace goes on for about two minutes longer than it should and goes absolutely nowhere, while the initially very impressive doom metal track The Lord Is My Light could probably do with an interjection of blackened hardcore fury. Really, it's at this point that the record begins to drag, maintaining an unfocused torrent of noise, slow, calculated bursts of sludgy goodness and random bass drum torture as well as on the rest of the album, but it becomes a tad predictable. The increase in noise towards the end also robs the album of its enthrallingly bleak approach to melody. Luckily, the first half of the album sees the band fusing a spectacular instrumental output with the widest vocal range in modern hardcore, and when the fantastically placed, noisy backdrops are matched with the many, many brilliant guitar sections this dark, twisted record has to offer, it's clear the band are operating at full throttle. It's not their best work, but it's the one that's solidified their reputation within the scene for good.
