Band:	Full Of Hell
Album:	Coagulated Bliss
Style:	Punk, Grindcore, Hardcore
Release date:	April 26, 2024
A review by:	X-Ray Rod

01. Half Life Changelings
02. Doors To Mental Agony
03. Transmuting Chemical Burns
04. Fractured Bonds To Mecca
05. Coagulated Bliss
06. Bleeding Horizon
07. Vomiting Glass
08. Schizoid Rupture
09. Vacuous Dose
10. Gasping Dust [feat. Ross Dolan]
11. Gelding Of Men
12. Malformed Ligature [feat. Jacob Bannon]

It is commendable that Full Of Hell keeps reinventing itself by adding outside influences to their grindcore formula. Still, the new sounds have to make sense, and Coagulated Bliss shows a band losing touch with what made them great.

I’ve been a fan of Full Of Hell for a solid decade now. I discovered them around the time of their sophomore full-length, Rudiments Of Mutilation, which I still regard as one of the more depraved examples of modern grindcore. The band’s pinch for noisy textures and more complex songwriting landed them collaborations with many extreme music projects, like Merzbow, Primitive Man and The Body. A craving for more atmospheric sounds can also be heard in their collaboration with shoegaze act Nothing, which came out last year. As much as I enjoy these works, it has always been their full-lengths that have captivated me the most throughout the years. It is tempting to ponder how the collaborations have affected the subsequent full-lengths where it’s just Full Of Hell calling the shots, but it is not in my interest to place any responsibility on either Primitive Man or Nothing for my reaction to Coagulated Bliss. Fact is that I was already worried about their previous record, Garden Of Burning Apparitions; I appreciated the maniacal hell that was condensed into a short 21-minute release, but the cleaner production and more technical mathcore leanings on the guitars, as well as the noise rock influences on some of the tracks, felt jarring and out of place.

Full Of Hell has doubled down on the noise/alternative rock influences, but this ain’t Chat Pile or Today Is The Day. Full Of Hell doesn’t mix their different ideas into a cohesive whole on Coagulated Bliss. The vocals seem conflicting, as they don’t match the vibe of the more upbeat songs. The musicianship is still on point, but all the band’s ideas are at odds with each other, with the bursts of grindcore/powerviolence feeling like nothing more than a quick afterthought. “Fractured Bonds To Mecca”, for example, is an aimless, slow and sludgy industrial track with a very questionable drum machine. This is then followed by the title track, which does a 180-degree detour into hardcore and noise rock territory very reminiscent of Today Is The Day, but without the proper expertise in songwriting to make the connection between the tracks work. The upbeat tempo and major chords used in the faster tracks are a far cry from the intensity and morbid images the band could create just a few full-lengths ago. After that comes yet another puzzling choice, which is “Bleeding Horizon”, the slow, long track of the album at 6 minutes. Full Of Hell was previously very adept at holding the tension and creating engaging climaxes, but “Bleeding Horizon” has none of this, and instead we get aimless droning that isn’t even enhanced by noise or electronic flairs to at least make it more interesting. By the last third of the song, the only culmination found is in a very boring alternative riff that mixes badly with Dylan’s intense screaming.

What follows on the second half of the album is considerably more aggressive and better than what can be heard previously. However, the grittiness I often felt with the band’s music is gone, as the product feels sterile with the mathcore influences. I still appreciate the effort the band clearly put in trying new things, but they have used these new sounds in a way that takes away their identity. I’m as sad as the awful sound coming from the poor saxophone used at the end of this mess of an album. Seriously, check out the ending. It’s sad, I tell ya!