Review Summary: Full of Hell raise the bar for Grind metal
This year has overseen the release of numerous hostile albums and despite the single-minded vision of creating as much of a nasty racket as possible, few of these albums sound synthetic to one another, admirably. One of the leaders of this pack of rabid artists is Full of Hell.
Ironically, when attempting to bring about a sonic apocalypse, the trick to generating this unstable tone is making music that is controlled, comprehensible and calculated. Simply throwing a concoction of raucous drumming, highly distorted guitars and spitting vocals together with no cohesion will make an almighty row, but, it comes across as unfocused and jarring; more like a wasp in a jar than a cacophonous rapture. Thankfully, Full of Hell understands this pitfall within Grind metal. Additionally,
“Trumpeting Ecstasy” is only 23 minutes long and Full of Hell waste none of the album’s runtime in proclaiming a continually frantic tone through seamless transitions between all 11 songs, illustrating an excellent balance of each bandmember’s abilities.
As mentioned,
“Trumpeting Ecstasy” is a frantic album. Towards the end of “The Cosmic Vein”, Full of Hell establishes a genuinely alarming setting by way of Spencer Hazard’s barrage of blaring guitars while Dave Bland brutally punishes his drum kit during “Deluminate” with volleys of blast beats and crashing cymbals. Similarly, Sam DiGristine’s monstrous bass injects blackened punk adrenaline into “Gnawed Flesh” to amplify the band’s commanding stance. Outside of traditional instrumentation, constant noise and expressive samples, such as distorted narratives that briefly tackle topics such as ungodliness and damnation, also fills any momentary gaps of silence between the assaulting rhythms to heighten the insane atmosphere on “Branches of Yew” and “Crawling Back to God”. Kurt Ballou’s gravelly production is also so precise that each element within the wall of noise is comprehensible, moreover, it intensifies Full of Hell’s domineering attitude further.
On occasion, Full of Hell fluctuates between intensities- albeit harsh and harsher. Dylan Walker’s feral vocals give the impression of the noise you’d make as sharpened talons tear through your eyes and across your face throughout
“Trumpeting Ecstasy” and snap between low-end gurgling grunts and torturous screeching in “Fractured Quartz”. However, in the same song, he also shouts his lyrics clearly in order to sound as immense as possible. After travelling at full-throttle for half the track, his bandmates alter the tempo of “At the Cauldron’s Bottom” to a slow, powerful stamp; one prolonged note later, all hell breaks loose and the band’s third ends on an intimidating breakdown.
As well as avoiding poor production, Full of Hell also overcome the limitations that Grind exhibits. Due to the short duration and swift execution of
“Trumpeting Ecstasy”, the songs fail to leave lasting standout moments unless they’re played repetitively. Nevertheless, since their previous album,
“Rudiments of Mutilation”, they’ve spent most of their time in crossover mode, releasing joint LPs with the avant-garde artists such as Merzbow and The Body. Diversifying their blood-curdling sound enables them to loosen their chokehold and create infectious moments on the title track and experiment with art pop musician, Nicole Dollanganger. Her radiant wails fill the distorted void with cleansing light while Full of Hell attempt to batter these intrusive, comforting vocals with their own bitterness.
“Trumpeting Ecstasy” is the result of all of Full of Hell’s past collaborations and albums weaved into one fluent pattern. They show no signs of ditching their signature Grind or dashes of death metal and it’s the maddened elegance harsh beauty that makes the album so commendable.
