Full Of Hell & THOU – Galatos: August 25, 2024

 A little piece of America rolled into Tamaki Makaurau last night, Maryland’s grindcore gods Full of Hell buddied up with Louisiana’s doom greats Thou to deliver a barrage of maelstrom beats on a darkening Sunday evening.

Rvkkvs

Maniacal NZ Death Grind mania from Tamaki Makaurau, that’s what their internet presence says. Live, already on stage, as I negotiate my way in (I’m not on the reviewer’s list, luckily they pity me) Rvkkvs are fucking intense, tight, a live onslaught.

Their guitarist is phenomenal on the axe, including his whammy bar, he has a mature prescience, not clean-cut, but dangerous, devious, devilish. The six-string bass masks, allows, creates, space for a single guitarist to be free, create as the Rvkkvs play, perform, punk it up (with dialogue samples) and promote their forthcoming album.

Am I right, Full of Hell come out on stage first, they’ve flipped the publicised order?

Full Of Hell

Full Of Hell, are a machine, a group that has ground out almost 30 releases, of which only six are their own, non-collaborative full-length albums. Once described as a dystopian grindcore jazz in a live review, FoH certainly don’t restrict themselves to infesting the space between death metal, grindcore and punk, their latest album Coagulated Bliss is 12 songs in 25 minutes! Dig deeper and you’ll discover a collaboration album with Japanese noise-core act Merzbow, a cover of Melvins song – Oven and just last year another colab album with US shoegazers Nothing.

As Walker and his bandmates set up, the rack/table of diabolical devices that he manipulates is being fine-tuned, as all is approved, it begins. We, tangata/the people in the whare/room, are instantly laid open to a barrage of gluteal screams singing and mordant instrumentation.

It’s unrelenting, the diabolical is the electronic samples and sound emanating from Walker’s magical contrivance. As the band morbidly, furnace through their set, it is the proto-post-industrial fragment of the bands he brings that is pushing the sound to the edge, and perhaps beyond of the genre they are associated with.

As JPEGMAFIA is for industrial hip hop, FoH are revitalizing dark music, returning it to whence it once was, as a counterculture to the mediocre, the common and the contrived. Between waiata/songs there is ethereal silence, as if to emphasise FoH’s mission plan. Like many in the audience, the songs blend, titles fall away, the noise wraps around you, and the spectacle of what is happening in the whare is the karero/narrative.

It was so good to be challenged, but not dismayed, to be exuberant, to have seen the avant-garde. 45 miniti/minutes of harikoa/joy.

Thou

For two decades THOU have taken the punk DIY ethos, their affinity with bands like Alice In Chains and Soundgarden and delivered a version that reflects their vision of post-punk, post-metal, and experimentalism within the doom, sludge genre. It was their fourth album, 2014’s Heathen, which gained them widespread critical attention, with its elements of aural post-gothic cinema. Jump forward a decade, and with a new album Umbilical, their sixth album from a crowded inventory, is again, critically acclaimed, and now they’ve finally made it to the lands down under (after an aborted effort last year)

Thou has duality onstage, singer Bryan Funck has an aura of precariousness, while other members could be members of an indie jazz quartet. Funck menaces as the others set up, silent hooded up, focussing.

Go harder, go harder now. The intensity of noise, dual guitars launch from the stage, Funck has one leg on his monitor, perched over the crowd that is being raised towards a moment of exaltation as the music pulsates and grooves.

Like their comrades, there is little chatter, and little symbiosis between giver and takers. Though a celebration of a band member’s birthday brings frivolity and sees Full of Hell members come onstage, there are musicians swapping instruments for a song, humanity, aroha raises its banner tonight.

The combination of Mitch Wells on bass and drummer Tyler Coburn has creative beats and rhythms underscoring the guitar riffs and guttural growls assaulting the room. Like FoH, Thou’s set is a complete narrative. Those in the audience, obsessed, will delineate each song, but experiencing the whole is the taonga, like FoH, the 45 or so minutes of creative energy is the road to euphoria.

It seems to finish too quickly, words are shared across from stage to floor, it’s only 10.47pm but it is a Rātapu/Sunday. However I/we leave sated, we’ve seen two bands pushing the limits, being the ‘Exciters’ in music. E rawe!

Simon Coffey

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Chris Warne:

Full Of Hell:

THOU:

Rvkkvs: