Full of Hell – “Kopf Meines Vaters” from Split EP (2011 Get This Right Records)
Full of Hell play difficult, challenging music. It is punishing, and extreme, and lives in my head alongside bands like Nails, Trap Them, or Wormrot. Apple Music describes them as powerviolence, and while I see how they got there, this descriptor really threw me when I read it. Thankfully it isn’t attributed to an actual human, as can sometimes happen with Apple Music blurbs, because I’m not here to pick fights, you know? But I guess for my money I expect my powerviolence to have lots more starts and stops and barked vocals.
But if they are a difficult band to classify, fair enough. They gush about a WIDE variety of music on their appearance on the brilliant Amoeba Records series “What’s in My Bag?”, but what’s perhaps most notable is that Bastard Noise, among the most difficult, challenging bands I know of, get double mentions. Bastard Noise were born out of powerviolence band Man is the Bastard, but, as the name suggests, add a whole lot of noise.
The members of Full of Hell come off as smiley and wide-eyed as they gush about their selections, which is maybe weird for a band that plays such extreme music with a moniker that suggests a certain level of blasphemy, but who doesn’t love a complex character? At a 2019 Brooklyn show, vocalist Dylan Walker introduces “Branches of View” by explaining “Yo, this song is about rejecting Christ. And it’s about jumping off this fucking stage. So reject Christ and stage dive.”
Translated to “Heads of my Fathers,” “Kopf Meines Vaters” rages, though that’s to be expected. At the risk of sounding like a total goober, I’ll offer that music like this is an acquired taste. I know — I fucking hate it when people say that, too, because it sounds so smug: “I’ve acquired the taste, what’s your problem? Why can’t you be more like me?” I don’t say it with any superiority, but years and years of listening to insane person music has kind of cleared a sonic pathway in my synapses. I remember the first time I heard Charles Bronson or Monster X, for example, it sounded so absolutely bonkers that I couldn’t get my head around it. Now it just sounds like fast hardcore music.
And that’s basically what we have here. There are elements of grind, and LOTS of feedback, but the blast beats eventually give way to a heavy duty mosh part, and when things speed up again it almost feels like the fastcore of a band like Scholastic Deth.
Those in search of a moral might attempt being evil themselves, while still retaining a base level goofiness, and making difficult, challenging music that is based on actual song parts.
The Shuffler 