Had heard a few of their records, but the first time I really sat up and paid attention to Full Of Hell when they played the Unicorn. I’d schlepped up there from the Underworld after seeing a great but sparsely-attended Bl’ast! gig, only half-minded to go but half-cut enough to be persuaded. Simply put, they tore the roof off the place: a maniac outpouring of piss and venom by fresh-faced young men who didn’t look like they’d lived long enough to feel so broken by the world. I was hooked, and from then on in I stopped doubting them as a serious proposition. In the years since they’ve straddled a line between EP releases for hc labels and fuller efforts for bigger, left-of-centre metal imprints like Neurot and Profound Lore, and this latter development has been a good one for them. ‘Trumpeting Ecstasy’ sees the band’s hardcore-cum-grindcore sounding lean and clearly-defined; the guitars mercilessly chiselling away while a variety of vocals spew with Vesuvian intensity. Amid these elements are echoes of other genre-straddling acts like Thantifaxath and Altar Of Plagues, while the band’s noise influences provide further gnawing undercurrents that serve to savage and surprise. The results are concise and yet mentally wearying: this is a challenging record, and about as potent a distillation of raw hate and negative energy as you could possibly hope to find.
