Full of Hell - Coagulated Bliss CD

1. Half Life of Changelings 01:11
2. Doors to Mental Agony 01:36
3. Transmuting Chemical Burns 01:37
4. Fractured Bonds to Mecca 02:14
5. Coagulated Bliss 01:21
6. Bleeding Horizon 06:13
7. Vomiting Glass 00:56
8. Schizoid Rupture 01:51
9. Vacuous Dose 01:40
10. Gasping Dust 01:09
11. Gelding of Men 01:53
12. Malformed Ligature 03:34

Full of Hell burst forth with incredible force from the small, dagger-shaped city of Ocean City, Maryland, 15 years ago. Over five full-lengths, five collaborative full-lengths, and countless splits, EPs, singles, and noise compilations, they’ve evolved at extraordinary speed, their music becoming more complicated and technical without ever slowing down or losing its soul. Everything on a Full of Hell album feels like a blur: smears of guitar, harsh noise shaken like gravel in a bag, singer Dylan Walker’s snarl and bite carrying him into outer space or into the core of the earth. They’re coiled, interlocking, impossible to penetrate, and they move with alarming speed.

They have now reached terminal velocity. Having created their own context, they’re now able to walk around within it, to survey its terrain, to visit far corners and see who’s nearby. Coagulated Bliss sounds like Full of Hell, but it’s nothing like any Full of Hell record that’s come before it. These songs are trimmer, less freighted with anxiety, more interested in opening up than speeding away. Its bile is sometimes funneled into traditional song structures. It never shies away from the extreme harsh noise, unrelenting spirit, and pitch-black sadness of previous Full of Hell records; if anything, the leanness of these songs makes them feel even heavier. Nevertheless, there are tracks here you might find yourself whistling hours after listening. It’s an extraordinary and unexpected evolution in sound for a band who made their name on rapid metamorphosis, and it’s the logical endpoint of everything Full of Hell has covered so far. “I wanted to try to take every aspect of what we’ve done from previous releases and integrate it into this one,” guitarist Spencer Hazard says.

Coagulated Bliss was written and recorded shortly after the band completed When No Birds Sang, their collaborative album with Nothing. Working with the Philadelphia shoegazers gave Full of Hell new insight into the emotional and artistic power of classic pop songwriting, and to the importance of following a song where it wants to go. “That was a good experience of learning how to find what actually services a song,” Hazard says. “Even with Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home, even when we’ve had an extreme grindcore influence, I still wanted it to be catchy.” Walker also cites the band’s work with The Body for helping him to “recognize that there was value in pop music.” Accordingly, Coagulated Bliss features some of Full of Hell’s strongest songwriting: Gone is the frenetic flailing of Garden of Burning Apparitions and Weeping Choir; in its stead is a richer, thicker sound, one that’s considerably less ornamented—and somehow heavier than ever.