Album Review : Full of Hell & GASP (2023)
Maryland-based shapeshifting sonic beast Full of Hell released three records in 2023. It’s a lot any standards, but it already feels like a lifetime ago because they released a brilliant new LP called Coagulated Bliss in April and managed to once again raise the bar on themselves somehow. In fact, they released so much killer stuff over the last two years, their split with Californian noise rockers GASP was barely noticed upon release last summer and it’s a bummer because it's as weird and challenging as anything they’ve done.
This split has four songs, but a whopping thirty-two minutes of music. It's seven minutes longer than Coagulated Bliss. You understood that already if you're into any of these two bands, but it's not easy listening by any means. The songs are between six-and-a-half minutes and a few seconds shy of ten minutes long and they're more on the noisy and atmospheric side. It's not the most brutal project Full of Hell has participated in by any stretch of the imagination, but the operative word here would be "disturbing".
The record opens with Full of Hell’s A Ladder Made of Warped Light, one of the most challenging and syncopated songs of their repertoire. It has violent, jazzy breaks lead by their drummer Dave Bland and a long and moody atmospheric passage taut with unspoken tension only to reemerge into another nightmare jazz landscape featuring Sam DiGristine's haunted saxophone. A Ladder Made of Warped Light is a shamanistic journey into the sonic unknown, built out of memories and apprehensions. It’s amazing.
Full of Hell's other song on the split is titled All Knew None. It's another eight minutes scorcher featuring choirs playing backwards playing to bits of reverbed-up educational and religious samples before collapsing into this super noisy, shambolic and anxiety-inducing sonic goo that sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before or since. It's one of the noisiest songs in Full of Hell’s repertoire. It has a cinematic quality to it. All Knew None sound probably what composer Colin Stetson's nightmares.
Then it's on to GASP's side of the split. Impact Miracles is an slimy, unpredictable colossus that features smooth guitars, the occasional blast beat, synths, glitching electronics, samples of children speaking. It's a towering construction that eludes definition, really. It's so otherworldly and unbound by any conventional rule of music composition. It’s not before the final minute that it morphs into what feels like a mix of nerdy grindcore and shoegaze, but this song is so much more than that. It's lovably bombastic and offputting.
*
The split ends with the ten minutes-long atmospheric monolith Byflower Babel. It features sparse, almost tribal drums, disheveled guitars, backwards vocals, even pan drums at times. I love the inspired washed out vocals kicking in with about three minutes left to it. It has this dreamlike quality every song on this split share, but it also has some fire to it. Once again, I wouldn't call it a song to properly speak of, at least not in the way most people understand the term, but it's a powerful and cinematic collage.
It's easy to understand why Full of Hell and GASP's split was overlooked by critic and metalheads alike. It's not brutal or in-your-face. It’s atmospheric and disincarnate in the best possible way. It definitelty is one for the noiseheads more than the metalheads out there, but if you're into ghastly soundscapes as much as I am, it doesn't get much better than Full of Hell and GASP's split. It seeps into your skin like poison and lingers until your mind separates from your body and the devil wedges himself in between.
