Full of Hell: Extended Interview

Published: May 23, 2017

If you're not familiar with the MD/PA soundfuckers Full of Hell, we're not really sure what you're waiting for.  They've toured pretty relentlessly, and it turns out that they play well with others - to the tune of splits with Nails and Code Orange Kids as well as collaboration albums with the Body and freaking Merzbow.  They're restless, they're fearless and they're pissed as hell.  And earlier this month they unleashed their latest mind-mauler, Trumpeting Ecstasy, on Profound Lore Records.

Decibel got vocalist Dylan Walker on the phone during the band's February tour with Immolation and the Cavalera Conspiracy, and you can find some of that interview in Issue #152 (June 2017, Soundgarden HOF cover), but Walker had lots to say and we want you to know all of it so you can wow all your friends with Full of Hell trivia.  (Ha!  What friends?)

Is now a good time to talk?

Walker:  It was a crazy day.  I had no way to predict that today was going to be like it was.  We had a really long drive from Denver to Salt Lake, and [Interstate] 80 was covered in snow drifts and we got stuck behind this pileup of semis and it was just crazy.  So we were hours and hours late. 

How long is this tour?

Walker:  It’s a three-and-a-half week tour with Immolation and Max and Igor Cavalera, and we’re in the final week.  We’re in Salt Lake, and we’re doing Montana tomorrow – I don’t know why we’re going to Montana in February – and then we’re headed to the West Coast.  We’ll see how it goes. 

Is there supposed to be weather tomorrow?

Walker:  I’ve been watching the weather… It’s definitely going to be snowing all day tomorrow.  I don’t think it’s supposed to be a significant amount of snow or anything, but it’s still a pain in the ass.  Driving in the Rockies in the winter is really dumb, and every year I feel like [I say] we’re not going to tour in the winter anymore, and then we end up touring in the winter.

Not to rub it in, but back in Maryland it’s been pretty warm.

Walker:  Oh yeah, they’ve been telling me every day.  We’ve had a great trip so far.  It was so warm, and then it was just bone-chilling all of a sudden.  Other than that, things are good.

How is this tour, with those bands?

Walker:  We have it pretty easy on this tour.  I think we could pretty much get away with whatever, but we’re just trying to be on time and polite and stuff. 

Are the crowds treating you well?

Walker:  Yeah, it’s awesome.  It’s definitely one of the first times where I feel like we’ve had a tour where we actually… It feels more challenging.  We just have this feeling that we have to play really well every night, we need to win these people over, because they don’t know who we are.  The people coming to the shows are lifelong Immolation and Sepultura fans, and we’re just a new band.  So there’s that challenging aspect, and that’s actually really fun, too.  It’s been going really well.  It’s been super positive.  A total success, other than the drive.

How much new material have you worked into the live set at this point?

Walker:  We’re playing three new songs right now.  The guys wanted to play more of them, but I kind of had to insist that we didn’t do that.  I just don’t want to spoil it by playing half the record.  I think it’s hard for people to tell, even people that have seen us before.  The way we play the set, they’re maybe having a hard time picking out a couple of the new songs, just because we don’t usually stop.  There’s one midtempo song that’s new that I think everybody can tell is new, but other than that, they might have some trouble.

Do you just roll from one song to the next?

Walker:  We like it to kind of be a wall.  We have everything laced together with samples or we write songs into each other, just depending on the trip and what the vibe is.  Because the other two new songs we’re playing are under a minute long, maybe it’s easier to miss unless you’re really paying attention.

How does writing/recording fit in to your love of playing live?

Walker:  When I was younger, I definitely thought that playing live was the end-all experience, and I still love it.  If I could perform every day, I would.  It’s a great outburst of energy.  It feels very cathartic.  But the writing process has actually become something that maybe I could even value more nowadays, just the experience of writing and recording a record.  I think it was something I had to get into over the years, and I think my bandmates would agree with me.  It may be a little more of a mature interest, as opposed to just playing live.  Maybe it’s growing from punk a little more into metal – you get more into writing the records. 

You release music often with splits, EPs, albums…  Do you have a writing/recording routine?

Walker:  I don’t think we could slow down if we wanted to.  For the last couple years, Spencer and I have been trying to… We just want the music to be a little more focused, in terms of the releases, like maybe a little bit less releases, but we can’t.  I don’t even think it matters how busy we are, because we’re always touring, but he’s always thinking about what’s next. 

When something’s written, do you feel like you know what kind of a release it belongs on?

Walker:  A lot of times, we know what we’re writing for when we start writing.  It’s very intentional.  If it’s a split with Nails, for instance, that’s the last split we did, we definitely had a motif in mind.  Spencer had an idea for how he wanted the riffs to hit people.  It’s pretty intentional when we go to write the release, we know where the release is going.  When we worked with the Body, and we’ve done a couple collabs with them now, that’s done in studio, so there’s no intention at all there.  It’s completely written in the studio and I think we’re just trying to bounce our most extreme ideas off each other.  It just depends.

Have you spent time listening to the new record?

Walker:  Actually, we usually always do that.  We’ll pore over mixes and then master files.  I put the master files onto my phone and we’ve listened to it a few times.  It all depends on the release – sometimes we’ll give it a couple approving listens and then let it sit, but I’ve actually listened to this a whole bunch, because it was really fun to make and I feel pretty good about how it turned out.  We actually took a little more time than we usually do in the studio.  Anytime I’ve listened to whatever recording we’ve ever done, usually there’s one or two things where I’m just like, ‘Goddamn it, I wish I could go back and just add in this little tiny thing or embellish this word a little differently,’ or whatever.  But this time, I was trying to just go for anything that I thought I might want to go for.  And Kurt Ballou was very helpful in pushing us to do anything we might want to do on the record. 

Was working with Kurt different than the ways you’ve worked before?

Walker:  We’ve always worked with really talented engineers, but Kurt’s a special guy.  We’re big fans of Converge.  We grew up listening to Converge, so aside from that obvious well of experience, I think he really understands what a band is going for before they come in, no matter what kind of band it is.  I feel like he has an ear for understanding what that band wants to achieve with their record, maybe even a little better than that band understands themselves.  Kurt had a way of correcting us in a way that didn’t feel too negative.  It was very positive critiques, and he had really good, subtle ideas on how to tweak things – vocal rhythm, or stacking vocals, just little stuff I never would have thought to do myself – and he was very helpful with Spencer as well, just little guitar techniques.  Little tiny things that he felt Dave needed to do with this part or that, as far as rhythm goes.  He had some really cool ideas that helped some of the songs pop, like weird extra layers that we wouldn’t have considered, but he was like, ‘I think this might sound cool, you should try this.’  And it was like a lightbulb, like several lightbulbs were going on during the session.  It was really nice.  He’s a cool guy.

Do you feel like you worked out any particular philosophical ideas this time?

Walker:  I wouldn’t say it’s any more cathartic than any of the other records.  I think this record is a lot more focused and perhaps a little more articulate, instrumentally and lyrically.  There’s certainly themes on the record, and I think there’s a lot more focus to the record.

Can you talk about where you pulled that focus from?

Walker:  It’s a current events style record, I suppose.  The album’s kind of about man’s small goods, like the small good actions being washed away by our species on a larger scale.  If you looked at humanity on a long time line, I kind of feel like humanity got lost at its inception point.  Sorry, it’s a little inarticulate.  I have trouble going over specifics on a record.  I want the record to be interpreted by people in whatever way they want.  This one’s definitely a little more direct than the other ones. 

What do you do when you’re out on tour?

Walker:  When the routing isn’t suicidal like this one, there’s definitely things that we want to do.  We’re all really into food, so we definitely go for the nastiest food in town, no matter what.  I attribute a lot of that to the Body.  Those guys eat like five meals a day.  That’s their passion.  The rhythm section [of Full of Hell] is definitely obsessed with weed, so depending on where we go, that’s definitely in their agenda 110% of the time.  We’ve done museums and stuff like that in the past.  In the States, it’s a little less interesting nowadays for us, just because we’ve circled the country a whole bunch of times.  I’m sure other people feel the same way.  But there’s always staples:  We always go to Amoeba Records in L.A. and that kind of stuff.  Typical touristy bullshit.

Do you get to take other bands out on tour with you who are not as well known?

Walker:  It’s a little debatable whether the bands were less well known than us, but we have done that in the past.  We haven’t for a minute, now, because we never had these kind of opportunities, so we’re just taking them and seeing how it is.  But we’re planning things right now where we’re going to take out bands that I feel are perhaps a little less known than we are that I would like to show to people.  We’ve certainly done that in the past.

A good example of a band that are comprised of our heroes that I don’t feel like a lot of people know even existed maybe outside of that particular niche:  We booked a tour for a band called Column of Heaven from Canada a couple years ago.  Column of Heaven is ex-members of this band called the Endless Blockade.  The Endless Blockade were hugely instrumental as far as influences go for Full of Hell.  The were a powerviolence band that incorporated harsh noise, very sociopolitical, a very deep, deep band, incredible, and Column of Heaven was like there new, even better project.  But because of the nature of the music, I feel like not a ton of people knew who they were because it’s a niche kind of genre.  So we took them on tour, and people definitely came to see them that would never have seen them before.

And actually, a better example, more recently, when we did our tour with the Body over the summer, we brought a band called Gas Chamber on tour with us.  We kind of feel like Gas Chamber is one of the best bands in the world, the best kept secret.  They’re kind of a powerviolence band as well, but it’s almost funneled through some kind of psychedelic Pink Floyd filter.  They’re geniuses.  They’re astronauts.  They’re fucking out of this world.  It’s humbling watching them.  I don’t think a lot of people know who Gas Chamber are, and they’re unbelievable.  They’re just one of those treasures.  It’s a privilege to bring those kinds of bands on tour, and it’s a joy to watch people watch them that had never seen them before.  I would definitely want to do that more often in the future.

With this kind of music, even at the peak, even the Decibel Tours where tons of people attend, it’s still just like this small community in this big world of morons, and most people would never understand, don’t even know it exists, and then you look at the small level, a band like Gas Chamber or Full of Hell, and it’s just like, ‘Yeah, we’ll play to twelve people.’  That’s pretty par for the course.  It’s whatever.  You better like it, because it’s going to happen a lot. 

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