Full of Hell – Trumpeting Ecstasy

In “Burden of Dreams,” the making-of documentary that tries its best to explain what everyone’s favorite nihilist was thinking when he made the psychotically ambitious “Fitzcarraldo”, a young Werner Herzog gives us the pickle tickle as he waxes on about how goddamn fucking miserable the jungle is. “Nature here is vile and base… of course there is a lot of misery… but it is the same misery that is all around us… the trees here are in misery,” … well shit, better cancel my my trip to the amazon. This is the sample, re-tuned with some distorted heavy duty basso profundo modulation, with which Full Of Hell open Trumpeting Ecstasy. Nowadays, Werner Herzog is a mascot for the pseudo-nihility we all feel when we contemplate the pit, and I’ll be damned if we don’t all see how funny his schtick is. Full Of Hell tap into something important here. Where previous albums, most notably 2013’s Rudiments of Mutilation, took themselves immensely seriously, and to listen to Rudiments is to believe that the world is burning and dying around you, here we have something different; a sliver, a microscopic glimpse of the tongue shoved into the cheek. Hence the Werner at the top of track one to roll out the ash-colored carpet. Oh yeah, the album is rocking good. It’s fucking heavy, technically baffling yet still accessible, lightening fast (everyone says “blistering” these days, ugh) grind fused with bits of death metal and a few moments of noise, though there is less experimental work here than on previous outings. Full Of Hell are doing their thing once again, claiming their crown, sitting atop heavy music’s pile of skulls. Cool cameo by Nicole Dollanganger on the title track. Misery, all around us.