Trumpeting Ecstasy – Full of Hell

American power-violence band, Full of hell returns with their third solo studio Album ‘Trumpeting Ecstasy’. A ferocious album that starts off pummelling and doesn’t look back.

Review

This album is their best and most mature solo release in my opinion, their best album overall being their collaborative LP with avante garde act Merzbow. This effort brings a whole new level of intensity to Full of Hell as well as showing that they have learned from their collaborations with avante garde acts such as the aforementioned Merzbow and The Body.  They use industrial and electronic elements to greater effect than in previous albums and the small gaps of electronic touches in between punishing riffs make them a lot more brutal.

The opening track ‘Deluminate’ kicks the album off in ferocious fashion with about a minute of punishing blast beats and tremolo picking whilst vocalists Dylan Walker and Sam DiGristine complement each other very well with their mix of Walker’s tortured, high pitched screams and DiGristine’s vicious, guttural Vocals. The track opens with a quote from German filmmaker Werner Herzog talking about the misery of the world around us, this has become quite cliché in this type of music with too many power-violence and grindcore bands using this type of pitch shifted clip of someone talking about a generally unhappy topic to start their albums, which lessens the impact these clips are meant to have.

Most of the album is comprised of the punishing, stop start grindcore riffs interspersed with elemental and industrial elements used to give a short rest before thrusting the listener straight back into the pounding brutality that Full of Hell has gained a reputation for as in the short passage of feedback between tracks “The Cosmic Vein” and “Digital Prison”. The atmosphere given off on this album is very intense and even the quiet parts of the album seem to be overflowing with tension as to when it’s going to bubble over into the next riff or song.

Collaboration 

An interesting inclusion on this album is on the title track from art pop singer Nicole Dollanganger who provides vocals during the intro to the song, her beautiful high-pitched singing provides an excellent juxtaposition to the heavy, sludgy riff playing in the background. This is possibly the most unexpected collaboration I’ve heard in metal but it definitely works.  The instrumental arrangement still provides a lot of tension before Walker’s vocals abruptly interrupt Dollanganger’s sweet singing with his signature crushing vocals combined with a pounding drum beat smacking you down with every stroke of the drumstick.

The last track of the album “At the Cauldron’s Bottom” starts off in typical Full of Hell fashion with an unrelenting wall of brutality while the vocalist yells “TRUMPETING ECSTASY!”.  At around the two-minute mark there is a short ambient break which transitions the song into a more mid-tempo and sludgy passage, with Walker and DiGristine trading blows on vocals as drummer Dave Bland batters his drums into oblivion.  Eventually, this overpowers the guitar and bass ending the song and album with a very primal beat, the simplicity and repetitiveness of which leaves the listener entranced.

I very much enjoyed this album, well, as much as you can enjoy grindcore, and hope that Full of Hell can continue to build upon this sound and create even more music in this vein in the future.

Final verdict: 7/10

– Cameron Hamilton

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