Since their spectacular rise to popularity, the implacable Full of Hell has made a name for themselves at least as much with their chaotic grindcore albums as with their more experimental collaborations. This time, it’s with Nothing, a rising figure in muscular shoegaze, that the Americans are at it again.
The meeting between the two artists immediately establishes a common ground. Full of Hell has to slow down. Nothing, for its part, has to find a way of adorning the denser passages with its samples and delays. Fortunately for the latter group, When No Birds Sang contains tracks whose frameworks breathe a lot more than the short, unbridled bursts to which the grindcore quintet has accustomed us. There’s plenty of room to spread layers of guitars and other samples over the sound texture. In fact, none of the tracks play in the zone of blast beats and angular structures whizzing by. In fact, the pieces are rather long and slow, as you’d expect from post-rock and its derivatives. At times, the music ventures into the muddy abyss of feedback-rumbling doom.
The album’s main flaw is that it always feels like one of the two artists is incidental, contributing only superficially to the overall texture while the other’s musical aesthetic is in full swing. Usually, it’s the Full of Hell collaborators who get lost in the chaos. But this time, the roles are reversed, and we look for the grain of salt of adrenaline drowned in Nothing’s bath of atmospheric sound. At best, we’re dealing with a shrill, heavy version of the shoegaze band’s usual offerings.
One thing’s for sure, though, and that’s that the choice to label this album under the artists’ respective trademarks is more strategic. In one fell swoop, each band takes the liberty of experimenting outside their comfort zone while adding to their discography, something that will not displease their most avid fans.
