This is the sixth album from US grindcore band Full of Hell.
New Full of Hell is always a bit exciting, and this time they have returned with their most colourful album cover yet. What does this mean for the music contained within? Before we get to that, I’ll just link to my previous reviews of 2017’s Trumpeting Ecstasy, 2019’s Weeping Choir, and 2021’s Garden of Burning Apparitions, as all are damn fine albums worthy of your attention.
So, to Coagulated Bliss. A quick overview then. It has twelve tracks, with a total duration of 25 minutes. It combines powerviolence, grindcore, hardcore, and deathgrind, while being enhanced by industrial, doom, and saxophone elements in key places. There are two guest spots from the singers of Immolation and Converge too.
Out of the above, comes the unexpectedly rich Coagulated Bliss. On this new record the formidable Full of Hell have taken their core sound and expanded it, opening it up to a wider array of influences and ideas. Certainly the band are no strangers to these sorts of things, and have always been evolving and trying new things across their prolific existence, but Coagulated Bliss takes these wider influences and hones them to a focused point.
One of the things that makes Coagulated Bliss different is its increased sense of confidence with regards to emotive delivery and catchiness. Despite the snarling intensity of much of the material, there are classic songwriting sensibilities embedded within the mayhem that the band make good use of to shape the songs, adding a new level of feeling-rich hooks to their fury. Again, not completely new to the band, but certainly more of a focus than ever before.
Of course, you should take the above description with a grain of salt, as this is still grindcore after all, and this is probably still far too extreme for many out there. Even so, less chaotic, less noise-ridden, and more structured and streamlined, this is Full of Hell at their most straightforward. It’s certainly not lacking in power either, as Coagulated Bliss is an absolute beast.
Get ready for the concentrated brutality of Coagulated Bliss.
Essential listening.
Wonderbox Metal 