ALBUM REVIEW: Coagulated Bliss – Full Of Hell
FULL OF HELL return triumphantly with their brilliant new album Coagulated Bliss, the follow-up to 2021’s Garden Of Burning Apparitions. It sees the band deliver their most accessible and eclectic album yet whilst not losing one iota of their abrasiveness or heaviness.
From the very start, this is a FULL OF HELL album, so it is not for the faint-hearted but even by their own standards, Coagulated Bliss takes them up several notches in terms of songwriting and execution as well as outright sonic brutality. This is a band who are constantly making and embracing new music, whether on their on or as collaborators with a whole host of different artists such as MERZBOW, THOU and THE BODY and, just last year, with PRIMITIVE MAN, NOTHING and GASP. The frequency of their output doesn’t diminish the quality of their music, not one bit in fact, and this is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt on Coagulated Bliss.
Coagulated Bliss is the band’s first album that deals with real life horrors. These tales of small town America are told so with much anger and in such a cathartic fashion that it makes the brutality and heaviness come out tenfold, and shows perhaps the strongest example of the power of the music of FULL OF HELL to date. From the full on electric charge that is album opener Half Life Of Changelings onwards, the band go for the jugular and pull at your heartstrings in equal measure as they stop at nothing with their complete noise and the whole thing is akin to some sort of primal scream therapy.
Tracks like the lead single Doors To Mental Agony, Vomiting Glass and Vacuous Dose showcase the grind roots of FULL OF HELL and the genesis of their sound, while the band show their eclecticism on songs like the title track which has a full on catchy vibe to it, the vast drone of Bleeding Horizon, and the industrial vibe of Fractured Bonds To Mecca which features breakbeats that will break heads and an utterly filthy bassline alongside it for good measure. It all adds up to an album that will thoroughly blow you away again and again.
With guest appearances too from Ross Dolan of IMMOLATION on the deathgrind of Gasping Dust (something the band also tackle on the track Schizoid Rupture) and Jacob Bannon of CONVERGE on the unstoppably epic album closer Malformed Ligature adding to the special vibe that this album has, FULL OF HELL run riot on what is sure to be one of this year’s best albums from start to finish.
Coagulated Bliss is not only a masterpiece of modern extreme music but also a statement of intent from FULL OF HELL and a demonstration of where their forward thinking music is at right now and where it will take them in the future. The band rightly deserve all the plaudits that this record will get them.
Rating: 9/10
Coagulated Bliss is set for release on April 26th via Closed Casket Activities.
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