Ringworm- Hammer of the Witch

Thanks to the deluge of shit commercial bands, more concerned with cranking out by-the-numbers generic breakdowns and sickly, saccharine melodies than Slayer-worship instrumentation, metalcore has become a dirty word as of late. Luckily genre progenitors like Ringworm are around to remind us it needn’t be returning with Hammer of the Witch, an album which shows that 20 years into their career, Cleveland’s prodigal songs aren’t about to rein in their sonic marauding.

Hammer of the Witch reinstates their renowned ferocity which went somewhat amiss on predecessor Scars, which while still a good listen, blunted Ringworm’s intensity and was the closest the band will come to a misstep. True to the namesake, this album comes down on the listener like a swift hammer blow to the skull, using the tried and true formula of modern hardcore-indebted grooves married with the scathing attack of extreme metal. Vocalist, Human Furnace, continues to be living proof that years of bourbon, cigarettes and relentless touring haven’t been to the detriment of his throat (in fact quite the opposite) with a voice sounding like the Furnace is caught simultaneously between a flagellation and an exorcism, spitting vitriolic, venom-laced lines like “Razor line, you feel the cold divide/Battle cry, open the devil’s eye.” Always at the forefront of the band’s signature sound, the guitars assault with all the exactness of a surgical incision, with more lacerating solos than you can shake a blade at.”King of Blood” harkens back to the halcyon days of early ’90s death metal with riffage which could have come straight out of the Florida swamps which birthed Altars of Madness. The rhythm section is equally as lethal with drumming which is precise yet bludgeoning and deep, striding bass lines on “Bleed” and “Leave Your Skin at the Door.” It’s not all denim-donning, headbanging appreciation though with the band showing why they are still favourites for basketball singlet-wearing kids the world over with tunes such as “Die Like a Pig” which at times recalls Cleveland peers and legendary hardcore band, In Cold Blood. The mixing and mastering is refined yet with enough low-end crunch that it doesn’t contrive the rawness of the product, a problem which so many bands these days suffer from.

Taken from brooklynvegan.com

Perhaps the one shortcoming of the record is that it hardly reinvents the Ringworm wheel, with the band treading the same well-worn path they have for years (“One of Us is Going to Have to Die” sounds suspiciously like “The Cage” off of The Venomous Grand Design). But in all honesty, who really gives a fuck? Where so many bands dive off the deep-end into wanky pretension and misinformed experimentation, Ringworm stay true to a sound which doesn’t show any sign of running out of steam anytime soon. It worked for Motorhead, Ramones and Slayer (to a certain degree) so really it’s a non-issue for a band of this consistent calibre. In fact in comparison to past albums like Justice Replaced by Revenge and Venomous Grand Design I probably rate it the highest out of Ringworm’s output in the last 15 years or so, a complete powerhouse of an album sure to be a favourite for everyone this year.

Stick Hammer of the Witch in your earhole and feel the ‘worm writhe inside of you.

New Haymaker Song

New Haymaker song posted at http://noisey.vice.com/blog/Let-them-rot-7-inch-haymaker-may-make-you-mosh-with-a-full-pizza-in-hand, which will be from their forthcoming “Let Them Rot” 7 Inch. For anyone who doesn’t know Haymaker, they play a brand of fast, pissed-off, super aggressive hardcore with a metallic tinge to it. This new song fucking rules and suggests a much crisper, metal direction for them a la Ringworm. Get at it people.

Full of Hell- Rudiments of Mutilation (2013)

I first came across these guys a year or two ago and too readily dismissed them as another Entombed worship band because of their name, especially considering the deluge of bands playing this style lately. How wrong I was. Where other lesser grind/hardcore crossover bands follow a formulaic approach, Full of Hell, from Maryland, Pennsylvania, are sure to decimate any listener’s initial assumptions with a sound that carries identifiable traces of their sonic antecedents whilst still being hard to pigeonhole within a single genre. In a year where they have had to compete with releases from contemporaries like Noisem and Weekend Nachos, Full of Hell have stepped up with Rudiments of Mutilation, a brutal and uncompromising listen which still feels like it brings something new to the table.

Arguably Full of Hell’s number one strength is the atmosphere they conjure in their music, equal parts eerie and terrifying- it feels as if the production style was conceived in a serial killer’s basement. Claustrophobic howls and intrusive noise samples add to this effect, a central element in the album which asserts itself right from the album opener, “Dichotomy.” The vocals only evoke the horror even more through high pitched screams which could have come straight out of the wintery forests of Scandinavia, such as on “Coven of the Larynx.” The guitar work is simple and understated, working in unison with a corrosive bass tone and deadly concise drumming to create the aural equivalent of a face being bludgeoned with a blunt object, best exemplified on the track “Indigence and Guilt” featuring Weekend Nachos singer, John Hoffman. This humble approach to their instrumentation is one which benefits the band, for it is in their song structuring where the true flair of the band reveals itself. Songs blast between the ridiculously fast and the devastatingly slow with precision and unpredictability which ensure the potency of these various sections. While they play the crust-infused brand of hardcore which has become familiar in the last few years, Full of Hell take this template and smash it to smithereens, reassembling the pieces in their own twisted expression. They are masters of pace, exercising restraint and release which ensures an unsettling experience for the listener, albeit an exhilarating and fucking heavy one. There is an uncertainty as to what direction the album will go in next. Tension builds in the dirgey number “Embrace” with ominous spoken word vocals before leading into the crushing despair of “The Lord is my Light.”

The album is a noticeable evolution from their previous full-length, The Roots of the Earth Are Consuming My Home, which while being an engaging listen, is rather conventional in its execution. My only gripe with Rudiments of Mutilation its brevity, coming in at 24 minutes. Usually this isn’t a problem in hardcore punk which prides itself on cutting the shit, but Full of Hell explore such interesting areas sonically, such as in the expansive closer “In Contempt of Life,” that it would be interesting to see them delve deeper into the nuances of their sound, particularly the industrial/noise realms which are already prevalent. A true product of our Internet-era music eclecticism, this album contains something for any fan of extreme music, seamlessly mixing hardcore punk, grind, sludge, powerviolence and black metal. The band wears their diverse influences on their sleeve with a photo of the band floating around on the web showing each member with a band logo over their head- Darkthrone, Man is the Bastard, Cursed and pg. 99 respectively. The combination of these obvious influences pretty accurately sums up the unique Full of Hell sound which they have honed and refined on this record, attracting listeners who are diehard fans of these bands and their ilk but arranging the music in such a way that it doesn’t sound like a generic imitation. A recent Facebook status by A389 Records (who Full of Hell are signed to) described Rudiments of Mutilation as “the most creative, vicious and underrated LPs of 2013.” While the latter point is something which may be disproven in retrospect, the first two points are definitely applicable. Rather than being a definitive record for the band I think it suggests something more ambitious and darker lurking around the corner, marking them as a band with the potential to be in the league with genre-forerunners like Trap Them and Magrudergrind, whose success was built on their ability to breathe new life into the rancid corpse which is extreme music. Seven and a half thumbs up.