by Scott Yohe
The unrelenting force that is Full of Hell has returned with their latest album, Garden of Burning Apparitions, showing why they are the biggest band in grindcore right now. Following up their 2019 album, Weeping Choir, Full of Hell builds upon their sound, getting rid of any doubts that they have nowhere else to go. In only twenty minutes, the band packs idea after idea without letting up for a single second. The riffs, the vocals, the percussion, everything is as intense as it has ever been. If you are looking for something to blow you away, something that you can play loudly, then look no further than Garden of Burning Apparitions.
People might be under the impression that Full of Hell has already reached their peak, that they couldn’t take their sound any further. Garden of Burning Apparitions is the absolute culmination of their sound though. It is Full of Hell dialed up to 11, and they are as in your face as they ever have been about it. While the band has always been noisy, on this new record they show their noise rock influences as loud as possible. The sounds on this album are harsh, the riffs are brutal, the vocals are vicious, and the percussion is holding everything together by a thread, and this is meant in the absolute best way possible.
Starting off the record is “Guided Blight” which opens with an absolutely blood-curdling scream from vocalist Dylan Walker. He growls along to an absolute crushing riff while the drums keep up and pound away at your ears. At only a minute long, the song opens the album perfectly. “Asphyxiant Blessing” keeps the tempo, featuring even more intense vocals which teeter on a black metal sound, with a demolishing breakdown a minute into the song, finished with distortion and noise at the end. “Murmuring Foul Spring” opens up with something that sounds straight out of a horror movie soundtrack before turning into an absolute grindcore song. The drumming at the end is completely pummeling. After that we get the first pure noise song, “Derelict Satellite,” which is not unfamiliar territory for Full of Hell. The song sounds like you are trapped tumbling around in an industrial machine, but in a way it is one of the few moments that Full of Hell allow you to breathe. “Burning Apparition” has another riff from the depths of hell that sounds absolutely amazing, like you truly are hearing the apparitions burn for what they have done. Every song on this album has something going for it and none of them seem out of place. Full of Hell even have a saxophone freakout at the end of “Urchin Thrones”.
The vocals and the lyrics on Garden of Burning Apparitions are consistently difficult to understand what Dylan Walker is saying. However, this is actually a good thing because it allows you to dig into the lyrics and read them yourself. In typical grind fashion the lyrics are railing against organized religion and death but not in a boring way. You can tell just by reading the lyrics that Walker put a lot of thought into them. On the mind-blowing single, “Industrial Messiah Complex,” we can hear (or read) Walker scream lyrics like “Manufactured dreams/Industrial Messiah Complex/Sword of Damocles/Bludgeon of Untruth/Hurtle down and rain asunder” which is a statement against the industrial machine that organized religion has become. The lack of being able to understand everything is not a detriment to the vocals at all, because Walker’s vocals are absolutely killer on this album. Every single scream and growl sounds brutal and absurdly impressive. You can feel every ounce of anger behind them.
The best thing that Garden of Burning Apparitions has going for it is that it offers everything you could be looking for in a Full of Hell record, or even any grindcore album. It never takes its foot off the gas, it is always in your face, and as loud as possible. It never fails to sound interesting, it never gets boring, and it never fails to try something new. If you are looking for something that is heavy then look no further than Garden of Burning Apparitions. As always, Full of Hell have proven that they deserve every ounce of recognition they have earned. This album is a testament that they refuse to let up in any sort of way and deserves to be recognized for the boundaries that it pushes.