This album was released on May 17^th, 2019 on Relapse Records.

There are so many subgenres of metal that it’s almost impossible to tap into them all. Admittedly, I haven’t ventured much outside of metalcore, post-hardcore, and many other -core genres. When I was looking for this week’s albums to review, I came across Full of Hell’s new album Weeping Choir. I have seen their name through various metal sites and blogs, and decided to listen to their album Trumpeting Ecstasy to get a taste for this album coming up. Oh. My. God. I have never heard anything more harrowing, more haunting, more intense and heavy before, and I was instantly hooked and waiting for Weeping Choir to drop. Now that it is finally released, I was not let down by my own expectations of the project. The four-piece band has created an album that is undoubtedly evil and brash to the ear, and left me with a newfound appreciation for grindcore.

From the very first second of the album’s runtime, the relentlessness sets in. “Burning Myrrh” is unabashedly heavy, and it doesn’t stop there. “Rainbow Coil” contains three minutes of disturbing feedback and unsettling distortion that serves as what can only be thought of as an interlude, before “Aria of Jeweled Tears” picks back up with the sound of a machine gun in full automation. The riffs that are present in the album, starting with the ending of “Armory of Obsidian Glass”, when clearly pronounced in the mix (which is fantastic), are face-melting. “Ygramul the Many” is one that stands out as being clear compared to the rest of the composition. According to the band members, they took inspiration from themselves, which includes elements of grindcore, death metal, hardcore, crust, and any more genres that all seem to bleed into one another to create an almost incomprehensible sound. The atmospheric aspect to the overall sound of the album is a highlight that should be listened to fairly intently to understand what is going on.

As many probably have to do, I searched the lyrics for this album and was pleasantly shocked as to how in-depth they are. Dylan Walker’s shrieks and growls are 99% incomprehensible, but his writing style is beautiful, as he laments about death, rebirth, vivid imagery of decay and loss, and other similar emotions. There is not an ounce of positivity on this album, but a sense of haunting beauty encompasses the lyrical content of Weeping Choir.

It’s hard to believe that an album as chaotic and spastic as Full of Hell’s fourth non-collaborative studio album would catch my ear, but listening to the album in whole while reading the lyrics was a very enriching experience, and it opened the hellscape that Spencer Hazard, David Bland, and Sam DiGristine have woven into existence in an entire new light. Grindcore isn’t a mainstay on my watchlist because of this album, but for a genre I once almost completely denounced, Weeping Choir is an album that kept me occupied for twenty-five minutes and may have opened some new doors down the musical rabbit hole for me.

Rating: 7/10

Favorite Songs: “Thundering Hammers”, “Armory of Obsidian Glass”, “Ygramul the Many”