LIVE REVIEW: Full Of Hell @ Slay, Glasgow
Chaos collaborators FULL OF HELL return to Glasgow, following a slot providing muscle for NAPALM DEATH last year and their own incredibly triumphant headliner in 2023. Around here, the Americans are popular, and Slay is positively pregnant with appreciators of musical carnage.
Last-minute changes to the door time means we miss the magnificent grindcore JARHEAD FERTILIZER, who share members with the headliners. Such a shame. Nonetheless, next up is THE BODY, an experimental noise/sludge/industrial duo who have recorded a collaboration with FULL OF HELL. Slay is rammed and these Americans are extremely loud. Those without earplugs regret it (some people put their headphones on to dull the noise) and even those with earplugs periodically adjust them. The hard-to-categorise music is creepy, lonely, baleful, distressing, unhinged, disgusting, loathing and suffocating. This bizarre brew means some sections hit, while others don’t due to being too ambitious or not weird enough. Thankfully, it’s mostly hits for those who devour mean and oppressive music like this. The audience is reserved but transfixed and mostly appreciative between tracks. Aural mayhem like this is a balancing act but it can work live, and does tonight.
Rating: 8/10
Imagine being set on fire then getting run over by an eighteen-wheeler truck. That’s an accurate depiction of a FULL OF HELL concert. The grindcore hurricane begins with the slightly older atmospheric and aggressive Burning Myrrh, sounding on-point. These Americans began life in 2009 as a powerviolence/grindcore obscenity and evolved their sound to become death metal-tinged grind with their breakthrough album Trumpeting Ecstasy. With song lengths being so precise, they pack a lot into their set. The Trumpeting Ecstasy selections land are certainly the audience’s preferred cup of terror, given the limb-dismembering mosh pits. Bound Sphynx, Branches of Yew and their most popular anthem Crawling Back to God (some in the front row get the microphone to shout along) are stark reminders why the band escalated in esteem with this release.
Bone, Coral and Brine, Thrum in the Deep, and Pile of Dead Horses blow the dust off the headliner’s ballsy powerviolence era. They make you question how three individuals can sound like a particularly pissed off military force. Their latest album Coagulating Bliss sees the quartet incorporate neck-twisting mathcore into their sound with fantastic results. Doors to Mental Agony, Transmuting Chemical Burns and Schizoid Rupture batter Slay with technical disorder. Frankly, it’s a shame these are the only cuts from this album.
Vocalist Dylan Walker is a madman, alternating between his deeper barks and scratchier rasps, while also handling the electronics. David Bland is an example of reverse nominative determinism – his drumming is beastly, occasionally complex and never falters. Nearly an hour of raging non-stop moshing, the band wraps up their set to a sea of shiny sweat, matted hair and soaking clothes. The show feels like getting bloodily beaten by twenty thugs, but perhaps the audience is masochistic, given the huge ovation FULL OF HELL receives. Here’s hoping they continue to batter Glasgow with this sustained consistency of these recent visits.
Rating: 9/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Glasgow from Duncan McCall here:
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