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It’s wild that the announcement for Scraping The Divine<\/em> went a bit under the radar for many, since it’s a collaboration between two artists both at an incredible point in their discographies.<\/p>\n

Andrew Nolan<\/strong> has often occupied similar spaces to Full Of Hell<\/strong> throughout his career, with his musical pedigree reaching back to the comparable acidic powerviolence-noise of projects like Column Of Heaven<\/strong>, the glacial, sledgehammer sludge of The Endless Blockade<\/strong> and the gut-punch hardcore of early project, Ebola<\/strong>. His solo material since 2020 has been markedly more eclectic, with albums like 2021’s Lonely Water<\/em> having leaned towards nocturnal industrial techno and dub in its influences, or the collage-concr\u00e8te of 2020’s Museum Etiquette<\/em>. Arguably his most prominent record was last year’s The Hunt<\/em>, a collaboration with Chicago-based project God Is War<\/strong>, one of 2023’s most underrated records, bridging the gaps between hip hop, power noise and dub, a really fucking wonderful, overlooked record.<\/p>\n

Full Of Hell has spent the last few years skirting the edges of various genres, slowly angling towards what would be their newest sound which coalesced into the bizarre, endlessly compelling mathcore-via-arena-rock they developed on Coagulated Bliss<\/em> earlier this year. Again, like The Hunt<\/em>, it’s a record that’s among the best releases in its year.<\/p>\n

Nolan has contributed to Full Of Hell in the past, most notably on Trumpeting Ecstasy<\/em> back in 2017\u2014an album I’ve now just realized while typing is almost a decade old. Fuck’s sake.<\/p>\n

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Scraping The Divine<\/em> notably doesn’t attempt to continue or expand on either project’s current sound; instead it comes back to a mutually shared heritage in industrial noise and piercing metal. It manages to do that without feeling regressive, however, and there’s a sense of purpose to almost every element of the album.<\/p>\n

“Gradual Timeslip” is a really fucking disquieting choice for an opener\u2014distantly reverbed, panning beats paired with stabs of warbled synth. The relative restraint of the instrumentation is counteracted by a greatly uncomfortable guest vocal performance from Endon<\/strong>‘s Taichi Nagura. His complete overwhelming of the vocals of Full Of Hell’s Dylan Walker forces his delivery center stage\u2014these anguished fucking wails that sound much more “real” than a lot of extreme music typically does. Extreme music can be a lot more artifice than art, and it’s easy to bullshit an audience. “Gradual Timeslip” is the sort of track that could probably disquiet one listener and make another laugh; it’s that knife-edge of sincere expression that’s pure chalk-and-cheese. It’s a bold fucking choice for your opener, to say the least.<\/p>\n