- After wading through the murky, turbulent waters for a minute and once intial shock and awe of grindcore evaporates, you can feel a layer of residual grime on your skin as your ears ring with tinnitus. Once you first dip your toes in, the dams of blast beats, tortured vocals, bandsaw guitars and a genre wide Stone Cold double middle salute to conventional song structures will ensnare you. To be able to separate the well written from the simply extreme, however, can be hard. That’s where, for me at least, Full of Hell comes into their own. The Pennsylvanian four piece have expanded beyond the genre limitations, crossing over into more accessible territory without losing any of their violent edge. A truly prolific group who are as comfortable at This is Hardcore as they are at Deathfest. They splice the catchier riffs of hardcore with squeamish noise and jarring electronics while being able to batter out lumbering, drawn out sections akin to Amphetamine Reptiles' best. Weeping Choir continues this relentless output and solidifies their rigid placement atop the extreme music mountain.
Burning Myrrh lashes through a minute-and-a-half of deceptively catchy fury before bludgeoning itself into a screeching conclusion. Vocal counterpoints oscillate between Nazgul shrieks and hefty guttural bellows and have been greatly exaggerated, giving one the impression of multiple vocalists. The swarm of bees melody that zooms through on Thundering Hammers emerges underneath downbeat rhythms and subsides into the noise of Rainbow Coil. When weaving these elements of noise into their work, Full of Hell become more abrasive as the hostile atmosphere melds with the sheer lacerations of their music. Although once it stands as alone as it does on the aforementioned Rainbow Coil, it falls flat and doesn’t work as effectively as it usually does. The gargantuan undertaking of Armory of Obsidian Glass is aided by the immediately recognisable, haunting vocal melodies of Krysten Hater from Lingua Ignota. Initially sounding like a siren -in the mechanical sense- when they swell in volume, shivers are sent down our collective spine, morphing into the killing sailors kind of siren and offseting the fried lead vocals perfectly. Exploding in its dying moments, our ears are brought back to reality with some tremolo guitars and crushing drumming. Broken audio snippets slide into your consciousness at the end of Haunted Arches and, along with Angels Gather Here is an impossible quick breather. These breathers are few and far between. This album is paced incredibly well: beginning with a bursting jolt and ending with the same intensity, reeling in the swivel-eyed pace in the interim. Changing pace doesn’t diminish Weeping Choir into a toothless beast. Instead it dials back the speeding flurries and starts landing, buffeting, goliath blows.
Feverishly blending the upper echelon of extreme music, Full of Hell put to record art that is initially alienating from a simple listening standpoint. Cryptic lyricism tinged with occult themes lament the ills of modern man and of course, this level of misanthropy is predicated by the amount of aural abuse thrown at the listener. Weeping Choir sees a band with an unquestionable command over their work and can indeed act as great launching point for those who want to listen to an insular genre and cannot identify one blaring atonal song from the next.
- Matt Lynch.