Band:	Full Of Hell
Album:	When No Birds Sang [Collaboration]
Style:	Punk, Grindcore, Hardcore
Release date:	December 2023

01. Rose Tinted World
02. Like Stars In The Firmament
03. Forever Well
04. Wild Blue
05. When No Birds Sang
06. Spend The Grace

There’s not many bands out there as eager on doing a collaboration album as Full Of Hell; Nothing may not be the most obvious bedfellows for a grindcore band, but they’ve found a way to make it work.

Previous crossovers have involved Merzbow, The Body (twice) and, earlier this year, Primitive Man; while none of them make music quite a violent as Full Of Hell’s regular sound, each of them is capable of conjuring up punishing sounds in their own ways. In contrast, the subdued, hazy shoegaze/alt rock of Nothing feels worlds away, but apparently the two groups have been in contact for a number of years. Full Of Hell and Nothing have shared stages, first in the ‘playing the same bill’ sense, and then in the ‘actually on stage at the same time’ sense; Roadburn Festival is a hotbed for collaborative sets, and the groups performed together at Roadburn 2022. The fusion has now been recorded to tape and released in the form of When No Birds Sang (making Regarde Les Hommes Tomber x Hangman's Chair the only major collaborative set from that edition not yet turned into an album, a real shame considering it was probably the standout crossover performance).

Realistically, beyond the presence of guitars and drums, there’s really not that much in terms of overlap between Full Of Hell and Nothing’s studio albums; obviously, any collab between them is likely going to fall somewhere in between their two separate styles, but the question arises of what exactly constitutes middle ground between shoegaze (light and ponderous) and grindcore (heavy and frenetic)? Having seen the Roadburn 2022 performance, I already generally knew what to expect from the album going into it, but if your guess is that the bands would lean more towards ‘heavy and ponderous’ rather than ‘light and frenetic’, you’re along the right lines. In truth, as someone who’s not overly familiar with their discography, it’s hard to hear much of Full Of Hell in When No Birds Sang; it does sound like Nothing had a much greater influence on the direction of writing for this record.

The song that possibly does the most to find middle ground is “Rose Tinted World”; comfortably the longest song here, it shies away from both shoegaze and grindcore in favour of a noisy, nasty sludge sound, as bilious screams and trudging walls of distortion are punctuated by faint textures, harsh guitar squeals and ominous samples. Still, after such a bleak opening, the song does take a more atmospheric turn midway through, as layers of guitar feedback and distortion are assembled to produce something almost ambient.

The next song, “Like Stars In The Firmament”, offers an immediate change of pace; the slow, quiet, subdued shoegaze here could have easily appeared on Nothing’s 2020 album The Great Dismal, and it never threatens to turn the volume up beyond that of the faintest whisper. Later on, “Wild Blue” and the title track offer much the same, with only the latter one even slightly upping the ante at any point with a faster drumbeat and slight swell in the guitar volume. The only reminders of Full Of Hell presence come in the second half of “Forever Well”, as Dylan Walker’s screams and a brief flourish of metal drumming spice up the still relatively sedate ‘climax’ of this song, and “Spend The Grace”, the one song on the album following “Rose Tinted World” that feels truly metallic.

I feel that When No Birds Sang has the ideal range of sounds; there’s no way manic grindcore would fit naturally onto this record, but the span of minimalist shoegaze to bludgeoning sludge, with the melancholic, brooding weight of “Spend The Grace” in between, works really well together. However, I do wish that there was a bit more of an even spread of the sounds across the album. When 3.5 out of 6 songs on an album offer a very similar, soporific sound, and then you get to hear “Spend The Grace” and see what the two groups are capable of coming up with, I can’t help but wonder whether the full potential of this collaboration was fully explored, particularly as Nothing have previously demonstrated a bit more variety in their own records as far as softer rock goes. What’s more, those shoegaze songs don’t have much in the way of memorable or noteworthy moments; they’re pleasant, but I don’t find myself feeling much inclination to revisit them.

Still, for what is possibly Full Of Hell’s most adventurous collaboration yet, When No Birds Sang is certainly respectable, and it is interesting to hear Nothing doing their own branching out towards louder and denser soundscapes.