Full of Hell - Coagulated Bliss (2024)^{Release ID: 51563}

I think that Full of Hell are a band that would benefit from just doing anything that they feel like doing at any given time. I don't admit to liking Full of Hell's main discography, but I have heard them collaborate with others in the past and always wondered why they would limit themselves simply to grindcore. Well on Coagulated Bliss, Full of Hell have decided to embrace their madness and made an album that takers influence from all of their friends! And to be honest, it is likely their best album to date. You still have the short songs and furious grindcore stylings of "Vomiting Glass" and "Gelding of Men", but the album has plenty of sludge influence, none more so than on "Bleeding Horizon". And none of it feels taxing or tiring; because the song styles are spaced out effectively, those heavy grindcore moments are a lot more powerful than they would be on a standard grindcore album. I suggest giving this a spin or two if you don't partake in grindcore very often because their is a lot more to this record than that descriptor would suggest.

Best Songs: Doors to Mental Agony, Coagulated Bliss, Bleeding Horizon, Schizoid Rupture, Gelding of Men

You read the genre-tagging right.  I'm calling this "metal" on top of calling it a grindcore album because for a good portion of the album, it is so diversified and out-there that it's a difficult one to really peg down.  I'm getting switches between some thought-provoking noise rock, drawn out and brutal doom metal with noisy metalcore backdrops, black and death working in tandem and even a little sludgy stuff here and there.  This is Full of Hell going batshit insane, but with catchiness and accessibility covering it all so it never goes too far like Naked City's Torture Garden.  Full of Hell have always been one of the most artistic bands of the modern age.  They helped to justify the existence of the otherwise passable Merzbow with their collabs, Sister Fawn and the self-titled collab, the former of which was my number 1 FoH and the latter of which was my number 3.  The album goes for more straightforward grindcore on a more consistent level after the seven-minute doomy epic Bleeding Horizon ends side A, but the first half is organized chaos, justifying its directionless genre-bending with the bandmates's personas dominating the album's brutal presence.

Of course, it's safe to say that half the tracks are grindcore, warranting the tag, but with that seven minute epic steering closer to that joke of a genre tag RYM calls "downtempo deathcore" than anything, it's safe to say that this album covers the multitude of bases within the realms of extreme metal and metal punk hybrids, with thrash and crossover thrash being absent, and leaving room for some Orchid-style powerviolence.  It's highly accessible despite its plethora of metallic flavors, so I think the best tag for this album would either be "metal" or "extreme metal" as opposed to choosing any one specific genre.  I think to do otherwise might be a little insulting to this testament to FoH's metal cabapilities.  Although next time, I'd like to see them do this and incorporate some of the industrial sounds of Sister Fawn. Otherwise, this album is basically FoH's "When the Kite String Pops."