{"id":6847,"date":"2019-05-19T13:23:27","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T18:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/?p=6847"},"modified":"2019-05-20T14:46:02","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T19:46:02","slug":"review-full-of-hell-weeping-choir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/19\/review-full-of-hell-weeping-choir\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Full of Hell &#8211; Weeping Choir"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Full of Hell have been quite busy since dropping their excellent 2017 release <em>Trumpeting Ecstasy<\/em>. In addition to their 2<sup>nd<\/sup> full-length collaborative record with The Body and a new split release with Intensive Care, the group announced last year that they had signed with the ever-popular Relapse Records. While this is an expected move given the band\u2019s ever-rising popularity within extreme metal, it also raises the expectations quite a bit as they\u2019re now sharing a label with some of the foremost bands in grind music, including genre heavyweights Pig Destroyer. Naturally, Full of Hell is expected to bring the full force of their crushing brittle riffs and pummeling drum beats to their newest project <em>Weeping Choir<\/em>, and unsurprisingly it absolutely succeeds every bit as well as <em>Trumpeting Ecstasy <\/em>did.<\/p>\n<p>In many ways, Full of Hell preserve many of the core stylistic traits of their previous record, as that album and this new project are considered a musical brother\/sister pair. The album rips right out of the gate with \u201cBurning Myrrh\u201d, which provides a familiar sense of unbridled chaos, with furious blastbeats and ride cymbal abuse, low-end tremolo guitar riffs, and the furious high screeches and earth-shaking guttural growls of vocalist Dylan Walker. While these tried and true elements still stick around from last time, there\u2019s some noticeable changes here and there, with one of the most immediately striking being in the production. Kurt Ballou returns to handle production duties, switching up the style and sound ever so slightly. While both records saturate the soundscape and assault the listener with walls of vicious noise, <em>Trumpeting Ecstasy <\/em>had a noticeable focus on concentrated guitar tones and a generally cleaner punchier instrumental vibe\u2026 relatively speaking. Meanwhile, <em>Weeping Choir <\/em>pulls back on this a tad and really lets a bubbling muddy sound take over the experience.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"747\" height=\"421\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ob6y1mmILfc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is quite noticeable with a lot of the tremolo riffs and guitar melodies in songs like \u201cHaunted Arches\u201d where they get really muddy and blur together into an appropriately hellish sonic storm. More of the grindcore elements are felt through the chaotic and often somewhat loose-feeling drum rhythms, such as on \u201cSilmaril\u201d which switches the kick rhythms rapidly between 16<sup>th<\/sup>-note runs and triplet 32<sup>nd<\/sup>-notes maintaining a menacing groove throughout. The track heavily invokes vibes similar to songs like \u201cAshen Mesh\u201d from <em>Trumpeting Ecstasy, <\/em>especially when the song moves into punk-like d-beats. The album closer \u201cCellar of Doors\u201d constantly pounds and grooves on the drums as it switches between blastbeats and even some 6\/8 rhythms. Similar grooves and d-beat elements exist within the flurry of \u201cBurning Myrrh\u201d, and songs like \u201cAria of Jeweled Tears\u201d use the flurry of triplet blastbeats to great effect.<\/p>\n<p>While the more death metal side of the band\u2019s sounds is present throughout, especially heard in how the guitars and drums will line up in succinct rhythmic syncopations within tracks like \u201cYgramul The Many\u201d and \u201cThundering Hammers\u201d, Full of Hell also bring in significantly more of their experimental noise\/drone side into the mix. \u201cRainbow Coil\u201d is a deliberately tuneless wall of noise driven by synthetic squealing and vocal growling as the song is punctuated by bursts of rapid drum fills that blow out the sound even further. \u201cDownward\u201d utilizes a lot of off-kilter guitar progressions playing against shifting normal\/triplet blastbeats, and the song is topped off with a more loose rhythmic digression near the end, with the drums played in a way that echoes the stylings of KEN Mode more than anything else. \u201cAngels Gather Here\u201d opens with heavily distorted feedback that leads into a slow menacing buildup on the drums, pounding the toms as a distorted bassline blows out the mix into walls of noise. The song is littered with heavily industrial elements that call to mind their work with The Body or even their labelmates Author &amp; Punisher.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"747\" height=\"421\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XkS7PSB5iH4?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most experimental standout on the record is the nearly 7-minute mid-point in the form of \u201cArmory of Obsidian Glass.\u201d The song opens with a droning guitar distortion that builds for a minute before the drums enter with a slow, unusual set of rhythmic accentuations. As the vocals growl along, coated in heavy amounts of echoes, the song is complimented by more melodic vocals courtesy of Kristyn Hayter, known for her work as Lingua Ignota. Her contributions add an unusually melancholic vibe to the song almost akin to the more sorrowful tracks from bands like Cult Leader, a feeling that continues even as the song eventually ramps up to a more typical grinding set of atonal chord progressions, tremolos, and rapid drum fills.<\/p>\n<p><em>Weeping Choir<\/em> is yet another excellently brutal record from Full of Hell, one that finds an excellent balance between the many ideas that embody their career as a whole. The album brings back much of the more noise-oriented songwriting tendencies that characterized their albums and collaborations, incorporates even more droning elements and experimental elements than before, and manages to maintain all of this in discordant harmony with the grindcore and death metal elements that form the bulk of such hellish experiences. The band is as on top of their game as always, making this a metal experience that should not be missed.<\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Verdict: <\/em><\/strong><em>buy it. Full of Hell remain as full of burning fury and aggression as they&#8217;ve always been.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Weeping Choir is available from Relapse Records on CD, vinyl, digital download, and streaming services.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>[Note: a copy of the album was provided by Relapse Records for the purpose of this review.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Full of Hell have been quite busy since dropping their excellent 2017 release Trumpeting Ecstasy. In addition to their 2nd full-length collaborative record \n<a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/19\/review-full-of-hell-weeping-choir\/\"> [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","yasr_overall_rating":4,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"Product","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[1385,1384,473,761,328,331,332,463,1383],"class_list":["post-6847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-armory-of-obsidian-glass","tag-burning-myrrh","tag-death-metal","tag-doom","tag-full-of-hell","tag-grindcore","tag-noise","tag-relapse-records","tag-weeping-choir"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.surrealresolution.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Day-133-Full-of-Hell-Weeping-Choir.jpg?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8GYHU-1Mr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6847"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6856,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6847\/revisions\/6856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}