Album Review : Full of Hell & Andrew Nolan - Scraping the Divine (2024)
Full of Hell are the hardest working band I know. Not only they released 47 recordings in their twelve years of existence according to Metal Archives, they’re also touring so much that they played in Montreal three times over the last year alone. One of the many things making them so interesting and unique is their collaborative records with a cast of artists that is as unpredictable as they are entertaining. Well, Full of Hell released their ninth collaborative record last week with mysterious electronic musician Andrew Nolan.
It’s called Scraping the Divine and it is at the same time almost completely outside of their usual creative paradigm and embracing their furious, gleeful boundlessness.
Scraping the Divine features twelve songs and thirty-five minutes of electronic industrial goodness. Collaborations are usually where Full of Hell let their guard down and explore less accessible concepts and this album is no different, but there's a cinematic quality to many of the songs here granted by a balance between conventional metal instrumentation and electronic elements that make them somewhat easier on the ear than what you'd expect from this band. Not always, but often.
There are three songs that stood out to me as quintessential Full of Hell expansive weirdness on Scraping the Divine : the opener Gradual Timeslip, Burdened by Solar Mass and Blessed Anathema. The first features an unlikely, but awesome duet between Dylan Walker and ENDON's Nagura Taichi. There's a sixteen bits feel to it that hooked me from the opening seconds. Gradual Timeslip is all drums, electronics and screeching and it carried by its dramatic tone and Taichi's performance.
It feels barren, but in the best way possible. The way the end of the world is. I loved the addition of an organ to a Nagura Taichi spoken word passage. It’s subtle, but adds to the fatalistic atmosphere. Burdened by Solar Mass was the lead single. It stands out by its spacey, stretched out guitar riffs and deconstructed structure. It's oppressive and disorienting, yet it has something that’s beyond musical. A dense atmospheric tapestry layered by harsh vocals and reverb-drenched glitches.
Burdened by Solar Mass feels like you’re accessing a secret demonic netherworld through a spell of some sort. Blessed Anathema is a more conventional composition than the other two. It features an odd, heavily distorted melody, a syncopated drum performance by Dave Bland (who’s out of this world on this record again) and some of the fattest bass you’ve ever heard. Andrew Nolan output not only suits Full of Hell’s sound, but he kind of opens a new portal of possibilities for them too.
Heat Death from the Pyre and Approaching the Monolith lean both in the more conventional side of what Full of Hell does, for lack of a better word. Breakneck pace, unexpected alternations and a thick layer of primordial glitches. Both are carried by insane performances by Bland who's jazzy and explosive drumming style is so different from anything else out there. Andrew Nolan’s also played with Bland’s performance and incorporated it to a greater cosmic turmoil on the latter, which sounds crazy chaotic.
There are several abstract numbers on Scraping the Divine. Extinguished Glow, Sphere of Saturn (featuring Justin K. Broadrick) and Paralytic Lineage to name a few, which aren’t really songs to properly speak of as much as they are sonic tapestries of colliding sounds and textures. Extinguished Glow is particularly unsettling as it is unbound by the the laws of physics or composition. It’s an almost 100% electronic piece with lingering guitar twangs that evoke a powerful sense of emptiness.
Hemlock Gnosis is another song worth paying attention to. I believe it is Andrew Nolan performing the shrieking spoken word monologue. I’m not sure if he even sings (two other members of Full of Hell definitely can), so my apologies if this is song, but the commanding agression to his delivery and the way it floats in these stretched out, lingering soundscapes is genuinely off-putting. Common Miracles is animated with the same chaotic and unhealthy energy, but it’s a little busier.
On Scraping the Divine, less if often more. Dread builds over time and on top of silence. Sonic onslaughts don’t work as well.
*
There are some catchy tunes on Scraping the Divine, but you overall need a stomach for noise and experimental music in order to fully appreciate it. Since I do, I enjoyed the hell out of hearing Full of Hell’s relentless agression being used in a more controlled and disembodied setting. Andrew Nolan sounds firmly in command at times the way a plane hijacker would. I love that records like this exist. They challenge your ideas of what music can be and what your favorite bands can accomplish.
* Andrew Nolan contacted me on Instagram after I published the review to specify that Ryan from Intensive Care is performing the vocals on Hemlock Gnosis and that he does not sing on the record. Also, that anything on the record that’s not drums, vocals or field recordings on the subway was Sam DiGristine playing saxophone and Nolan just playing it with electronically.
I usually don’t put out addendums like this, but I thought this provided interesting insight into what you’re hearing. Shout out Andrew Nolan. You’re cool *
7.9/10
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