Review: Full of Hell – “Rudiments of Mutilation”

Full of Hell

“Rudiments of Mutilation”

Grind/Hardcore/Doom Metal

A389 Recordings

Release Date: June 11, 2013

Rating: 8.5/10

FFO: Nausea, Cursed, All Pigs Must Die, Integrity

Full of Hell are a 4-piece grinding hardcore punk band hailing from Maryland and Pennsylvania, and Rudiments of Mutilation is their second full length LP, following 2011’s The Roots of Earth are Consuming My Home. They’ve made their mark on the national scene with their unique blend of doom metal, black metal, sludge, grind, and hardcore channeled through raw energy, and Rudiments only advances and substantiates that reputation even further.

Through and through, this LP is about as bare-boned as it gets. The opening track, “Dichotomy,” is pure evil, as vocalist Dylan Walker unleashes abrasive screams over first ominous feedback, and then borderline schizophrenic drumming. The next several tracks are more straightforwardly grind, other than the apparent black metal influence briefly appearing in “Coven of the Larynx.” I like grind, but none of these songs really stood out to me personally, as they seemed to finish just as quickly as they arrived. But once “Embrace” hits, however, we hit an entirely different universe of pure rage. Droning guitars and foreboding rhythms sound behind muttered words of utter nihilistic despair, and the song segues into the massive doom escapade that is “The Lord is my Light.” From here on out, we find a band doing exactly what they do best: maintaining an absolutely no-frills, organic channel of desperate torment, only this time throughout a gradual pattern of subtle dynamics consisting of a number of influences that the band seems to have much more effectively drawn together.

Whereas the dynamics on The Roots of Earth sometimes seemed a little bit sudden, or perhaps at least drastic, forced, or far-fetched, Rudiments shows that the band has come into their own even further. They no longer seem to need to go out of their way to employ those influences, and their natural instinct for sheer psychological debauchery is the only guide they need to create a series of tracks, the natural diversity of which is only surpassed by sheer destructiveness. And it all seems fitting, too, given the record’s nihilistic theme. All that said, the grind tracks at the beginning almost seem like nothing more than filler, as the listener waits for the meat of the LP to smash its way in, which gives it a somewhat awkward feel, if not a sort of plot-like framework (in that the listeners are presented with an introduction, and exposition, and then a climax). Overall, this record was highly enjoyable, despite a rocky start.

Stream the entire record right here:

 http://www.terrorizer.com/2013/04/23/full-of-hell-rudiments-of-mutilation-stream/

-Ricky S