FULL OF HELL / PRIMITIVE MAN – Suffocation Hallucination

April 5, 2023, a year ago

(Closed Casket Activities)

Greg Pratt

Rating: 8.5

review black death full of hell primitive man

FULL OF HELL / PRIMITIVE MAN – Suffocation Hallucination

Here's an idea that seems almost too good to be true, and it's an idea that could have really not worked out in the end: get experimental grind/sludge/noise punks Full Of Hell to release a collaborative record with extreme sludgesters Primitive Man. We're not talking split EP here, we're talking creating songs together and hoping for the best. 

And opener “Trepanation For Future Joys”, all 10 minutes of it, is exactly what I would have hoped would happen when all these guys create a song together: messy, noisey, sludgey, ugly, horrid, it's an absolutely wondrous thing, and the fact that it was created with all these guys literally in a room together makes it all the better. Full Of Hell have done collaborative records before, but this one hits my sweet spot much better, this whole release being a monolith of experimental sludge, doom, and noise, monstrously heavy, extremely tense and uncomfortable, and relentlessly cathartic. 

“Rubble Home” has an opening riff that is both rockin' and an immediate sludge classic... and then there are blast beats. I'm thinking that great Mistress album no one remembers, I'm thinking a grind band and a sludge band walk into a studio and THIS HAPPENS and I'm also thinking about albums of the year. 

“Bludgeon” is a 26-second grind nirvana; “Dwindling Will” is six and a half minutes of soundscapes I can leave, but Full Of Hell often insist on that, so we put up with it. Closer “Tunnels To God” is 11:29 but takes several minutes to get going, and, combined with “Dwindling Will” before it, really kills the momentum here, but it's all part of the weirdo mix of sounds at hand so I'm going to offer it a rare moment of forgiveness, because once the blower sludge and sideways noise kicks in, all is forgiven. 

This record is a fantastic idea, and a beyond fantastic delivery.


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