Offering 12 songs in 21 minutes, the metal band refines its sound, creating an unsettled atmosphere littered with strange and memorable moments.
Full of Hell exist in a constant churn. On Garden of Burning Apparitions, the metal band’s fifth non-collaborative full-length, they break down elements of grindcore, noise, hardcore, death metal, and industrial music so the sounds may be reconstituted into something uglier, more barbed, and more enigmatic. Their previous album, 2019’s excellent Weeping Choir, seemed to balance the totality of extreme music on a sharp pinhead as it teetered through moments of incredible dissonance without abandoning the stomps and hooks of the band’s hardcore roots. Vocalist Dylan Walker said that those songs covered “every little area that we wanted to be ever since we started the band,” so it’s not a surprise that Garden feels like a refinement of the same sound, pulling them to greater, if somewhat less accessible, heights.
On its surface, Garden of Burning Apparitions sounds incredibly unsettled. These songs feel tugged into place, one part jerked into sync with the next: The lengthiest section of the opening “Guided Blight”’s 58 seconds is Walker’s opening scream. And if it’s tempting to think of the barrage of sounds as a form of collage, it’s also clear that every moment has been given an incredible amount of thought. “Murmuring Foul Spring” moves from dishwater murk to bright blasts from drummer David Bland, the rest of the group playing so tight that it’s impossible to tell if the production is chopped by some kind of stroboscopic effect; the hardcore payoff in the closing moments ends so quickly that you’re left with your fist awkwardly in the air. Elsewhere, “Urchin Thrones” is crowned by Sam DiGristine’s saxophone, which he first uses as a traditional backing layer, playing a broad and blank sheet of sound. But when guitarist Spencer Hazard sprints away, he follows, doubling his lead as they flirt with atonality. It’s a strange, even frightening moment that lasts all of three seconds: a sudden shift proving that nothing is safe in these songs.
Garden is littered with these small but memorable moments: the slide whistle of feedback that ushers out “Asphyxiant Blessing,” or the spectral moaning that flits through the otherwise straightforward bridge of “Reeking Tunnels,” or the way closer “Celestial Hierarch” ends in an acid-etched loop that mimics the heartbeat-thump of a locked groove on vinyl. The album’s concision—12 songs in 21 minutes—means every moment counts, and Full of Hell uses every bit of space they afford themselves to get their message across.
Absent a song like “Armory of Obsidian Glass,” Weeping Choir’s sludgy six-minute centerpiece, Garden offers no place to rest. The closest thing to a break is “Derelict Satellite,” a hailstorm of noise that crowns the album’s opening third. Walker’s vocals are buried deep in the distance, barely audible behind a shredded curtain of rattling chain mail. The album moves through eardrum-shredding dissonance, rattling blast beats, and lurching riffs so rapidly that it’s difficult to clock exactly what’s happening as it’s happening. But there are so many ideas, so many nooks in its corners, that the swiftness creates a sense of desperation: a desire to hold on to it, even as it’s being swept away.
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