TRUMPETING ECSTASY
Grindcore/Deathgrind.
Profound Lore Records.
Listening Format: Digital.
Full of Hell are an American Grindcore band still in their early twenties.
It's very hard for a Grindcore band to do something fresh this far down the line, but this band manages to combine the fastest and slowest of extreme music genres. I first heard them live opening for The Body and they blew my mind. They would transition from tight and intense Grindcore and out of nowhere cut into piercing, agonisingly slow electronic drones, and then out of nowhere they'd kick back into furious grind again. Their live performance was not only insanely tight and full of chemistry, but they really left the audience on edge with this disturbing and overwhelming air of tension. I'd never really seen or heard anything like it, except possibly for Powerviolence band Man Is the Bastard.
Full of Hell proved with their debut album 'Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home' that they could transfer that live intensity onto the records and since then they've pushed further into experimenting with noise and drone music, with a slew of full on Noise EPs and collaborations with Merzbow and The Body that often left the Grindcore realm completely. It's safe to say that there was a lot of hype for their next full length 'Trumpeting Ecstasy', and perhaps an expectation that they could push those experimental boundaries even more.
What we have here though, feels very much like a step backwards into what is mostly a pure Grindcore assault. The record is 23 minutes long and ten of those minutes are taken up by the last two of the eleven tracks. The first nine tracks are pretty much just a relentless barrage of lightning fast grind action, but if I am honest the intensity is rather lacking throughout, and there is very little to make them stand out amongst other run of the mill Grindcore releases.
The album has been recorded at GOD City and produced by Kurt Ballou of Converge. If you listened to the rather good Code Orange album 'Forever' released earlier this year, you'll recognise quite a few similarities in the production. The sound Full of Hell are going for here is much more guttural and full of low end. Most of the tracks also include low gargling vocals, very much borrowed from the Death Metal or Deathgrind playbook. Whilst this bowel crushing low end sound worked really well on the Code Orange album, for me it is actually detracting from Full of Hell's performance here. I think their previous offerings sounded much more vital and urgent. This could be a personal preference of mine, as I tend to prefer Grindcore to have a lot of high end. In particular some of my favourite Grind acts Discordance Axis, Gridlink, Wormrot, Pig Destroyer and Evisorax don't use a bassist and tend to go for a noisy, fast, discordant blur of sound. But even compared to previous Full of Hell records, this record does not make me wanna go apeshit, smash up my room and punch an old lady in the face...!!!
For me the best part of the record is those last two tracks. The title track has these eerie, clean female vocals and a slow, churning industrial beat, with layers of electronics and droning noise and it is wonderful, by far standing out from everything that came before it. Also when those crushing and raw as fuck vocals kick into full force, I start to feel that intensity that was sorely lacking on beforehand! The way the vocals switch between clean, dreamy female vocals into Godflesh style aggression is a touch of magic. Yet despite it being my favourite track, it sounds exactly like something that could have easily been on The Body's latest album 'No One Deserves Happiness', and that can't be a coincidence since the two bands released a collaborative album last year.
The album ends with another droning and noisy track that switches between furious Grindcore blasts and slow pounding Industrial, with even a few spots of eerie Dark Ambient over a six and a half minute run time. and it kind of makes me feel like finally! Why did they wait 'til right at the end of the record to give me that hit?
Full of Hell are a very exciting band to watch, but I'm honestly feeling a disconnect with this record. A real shame as I was pretty hyped for this one. I just can't dodge the feeling that the nine Grindcore or Deathgrind tracks that open this album just feel really phoned in. Even a guest vocal from Aaron Turner of Isis and Sumac fame on 'Crawling Back to God' doesn't really add much to the break the monotony.
Full of Hell's move to a more Deathgrind oriented sound on this album actually feels like their Achilles heel. I feel like the band have lost their identity and their uniqueness a little bit and although I am usually a big fan of Kurt Ballou's production work, this affair sounds strangely OVERproduced to the point where all the urgency and fire that this band are capable of gets sucked out the window. But it isn't just the production that lets this album down, but just a sheer lack of experimentation. I feel like Full of Hell have played things a little safe, especially when they've proven that they can go the extra mile and create some really out of the box sounds that their peers in the genre just aren't doing. 'Trumpeting Ecstasy' not only feels like a slog to listen to, but a missed opportunity also. 5/10.
Let me know whether you agree or disagree, whether you enjoyed this album more than I did. And if you want to hear some of similar sounds done better, check out the latest Code Orange album 'Forever' released earlier this year.
