Garden Of Burning Apparitions
by Full Of Hell

From Mercury 10/12/2021 17:35 | #274918

(Loud, abrasive, Noise meets Grind album. 21 minutes of grating riffs, screams and scratchy noise designed to put you on edge and hurt your ears. Solid album)

I have been waiting patiently for months for another album to drop that contained the same viciousness and grindy sound as that stellar masterpiece of a debut that Knoll dropped in February 2021. It makes sense and its strangely poetic that the band that finally came along to challenge Knoll was the band that Knoll has been most clearly influenced by - Full of Hell. If this album was not so clearly similar to Interstice by Knoll, then I wouldn't start my comment off with the comparison. But, alas, this is the same basic genre cocktail as Interstice - Grindcore/Deathgrind played at absurd speeds and heaviness while being mixed in with straight Noise tracks. Its the same. Yet... this ain't as refreshing and inspired and stunning an album as Interstice. The reason that this is lesser to my ears is that the production here somehow manages (on headphones anyway) to muddy up the works so intensely that the hammering riffs feel pulled back on slightly, and the noise rises so high that I sometimes lose sight of the grooves that exist. I think Knoll's album is more harsh and vicious and its recorded more purposefully to bring about a cathartic ear bleed while still accentuating the guitar and especially bass riffs and chugs.

That's not to say this is bad, it ain't. I am biased in favor of any album that makes me feel uncomfortable and attacked, especially within the grind sphere. This album has some seriously cool ideas, everything including the kitchen sink is thrown in the blender and mixed into this short and sweet 21 minute noise grind album. Very cool at times. The noise experiments are solid and keep the album refreshing, but, again, Knoll's noise explorations had a LARGENESS and an atmosphere that the snippets here don't have. Here they feel like little detours thrown in because the band wanted to get their noise fix.

Overall, this is solid. I like it, the death metal and grindcore heaviness here is pretty solid. Just because it doesn't live up to what Full of Hell's younger, hungrier proteges did earlier this year, doesn't take away the solidness of the album. While it was a slight disappointment to me because I was stupidly hoping for a 9/10, this is clearly a 6.5-7.5/10 effort and its good to have some more Full of Hell in my life.