Don’t be afraid, be very afraid. Full of Hell’s new album, Rudiments of Mutilation,
is what all those fairy tales were warning you about. All the ugly,
cruel, dangerous elements of the world have packed their bindles and
trekked across broken glass and glowing embers to join the sonic fray in
this release. While quotes from the band suggest that the album is
simply about “meaningless suffering” I created an entire narrative of a
tortured soul recounting violent deeds and troubling experiences
post-mortem, waiting for the revelation of what exists when our pulse
ceases, and finding nothing. In the street-wise words of Blood for
Blood, “What have we got? We got nihilism.”
Full
of Hell blast pitch-black, grinding crust’n’doom at their audiences
like they have a lifelong grudge against anyone in shouting distance.
After “Dichotomy” lures the listener in with howls from a bottomless pit
and eerie scattershot drumming, “Vessel Deserted” taps into the hardest
core of crust punk before slipping into the abyss for one of several
funeral sludge passages, where Dylan Walker’s vocals trail away like
smoke from bodies burnt to destroy evidence. Full of Hell rip through a
few grinders before pounding out “Indigence and Guilt,” a vicious
hardcore song with stop-and-start riffage over a grimy wall of tremolo
noise. When Full of Hell muscle up and aim to maim there is no place
safe to hide. You don’t want to have an arm wrestling contest with Rudiments of Mutilation. Remember Jeff Goldblum in The Fly? Compound fracture just waiting for you, son.
The
middle of the album opens up into a gaping pit of despair as “Embrace”
features lifeless, droning musing over feedback and a swampy, groovy
bass line. The song bleeds over into the doom track “The Lord Is My
Light,” whose dissonant opening chords dive cranium-first into a pool of
coagulated blood. This portion of the album is the harshest, scraping
along on its belly like a dying snake trying to swallow its last
rat-meal before it stops breathing. Then it’s back to the daily grind,
with “Bone Coral and Brine” and the title track cranking out crusty,
savage hardcore punk with barbed-wire texture. The album closes with “In
Contempt of Life” marching bleakly to a halt, with barked vocals
reverberating restlessly through a purgatory of ash and bone dust that I
assume looks frighteningly like Wyoming. In Full of Hell’s nasty
reality there’s never a moment of silence, just the shrill ringing in
your ears after a speaker explodes or a gun goes off.
This
release is exactly what makes A389 Recordings one of the most important
labels in aggressive music. Full of Hell has a versatile and downright
scary sound that needs to be celebrated and appreciated by fans of sonic
extremity. The Dude was totally accurate, even in jest, when he
suggested being a nihilist is exhausting. So even the most dedicated
nihilists should take a break and seek out Rudiments of Mutilation,
because this album will make you believe in nothing except the lasting
power of a musician with a bad mood. Full of Hell are also touring
extensively through June, so support these bad mofos on the road. Can’t
wait to catch them in Brooklyn with Trap Them and Seven Sisters of
Sleep, that sounds like the best excuse for a concussion I’ve ever
heard.
Check out the album streaming NOW at: http://www.terrorizer.com/2013/04/23/full-of-hell-rudiments-of-mutilation-stream/
And though vinyl pre-orders are sold out, get a CD/Shirt combo over at A389:
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