Suffocating Hallucination

The first studio collaboration between Primitive Man and Full Of Hell is Suffocating Hallucination.

Denver’s Primitive Man is Jonathan Campos (bass), Ethan Lee McCarthy (guitar, vocals), and Joe Linden (drums), and I have always positioned them in my head as a doom band. Full Of Hell, on the other hand, who is peopled by Dave Bland (drums), Spencer Hazard (guitar), Dylan Walker (vocals, electronics), and Sam DiGristine (bass, vocals), comes to the my consciousness as a noisier band. That’s just what is in my head. Both have been around for more than ten years and both have been quite prolific, publishing a large number of releases, including many splits with other bands. This one, though, Suffocating Hallucination, is not a split where each band contributes their separate tracks. No, this one is a collaboration between the bands where the music was created jointly by them both.

Side A starts with “Trepanation for Future Joys.” This song leaves no doubt about what the album will be like. It is not misleading. It is a head-on confrontation at the confluence doom, sludge, and noise. I had to look up what trepanation means. It’s drilling a surgical hole in your skull. Yes indeed. The sounds you hear are overwhelming. “Rubble Home” is the place where mystery dwells. It is uncertain in what direction the narrative will run at any given point. There are rough and ready riffs at times and chaos elsewhere. It is a perilous journey. “Bludgeon” is less than half a minute long. It is like a painful, sudden emission.

On the flip side we have “Dwindling Will.” The music begins cautiously, or so it seems at first. As you listen, you start to become uneasy, and you realize it is not caution so much as evidence of the aftermath of something awful, something that cannot be remedied. This track overall is quieter than the others, and that somehow intensifies it in the context of the rest of the music. The last twitch is “Tunnels to God,” the longest piece of the set. It appears to begin in space, or possibly an adjacent dimension. As we approach the center of actionableness, the clangs increase in number and volume, as do the sounds of the vortex. Discernable string instrument sounds enter about four minutes in with massively distorted riffs, followed by steadying percussion. In due course vocalizations and even wider guitar work joins and pushes the music forward in a seemingly endless crescendo that ultimately breaks into noise for the final two minutes. It all makes sense. Recommended.