Album Review - Full of Hell "Broken Sword, Rotten Shield"

Death, taxes and one to three new Full of Hell recordings every year. These are the three things human beings can count on. The fact that the Maryland-based quintet will not go twelve months without releasing new music is the only real certitude you can have about Full of Hell. What are they gonna do next and what is it going to sound like are two of the most enthralling questions I keep asking myself whenever this sonic shapeshifter is involved. Chaos and unpredictability aren’t just aspects of their music, it’s the whole point.

Last year, the boys gave us Coagulated Bliss, a monster record featuring three or four of their best songs to date and a glorious bleepity-boop galore called Scraping the Divine, in collaboration with living legend and half of Intensive Care Andrew Nolan. If fifteen minutes of animist, fantasy-themed grindcore wasn’t on your Full of Hell bingo card for 2025, they got you right where they want you for Broken Sword, Rotten Shield. Once again, it makes absolute sense in context, but you gotta press play first.

Broken Sword, Rotten Shield is not trying to best the hit factory that was Coagulated Bliss, nor does it even try. But it builds on its confident eclecticism and catchier, more nostalgic riffing style Spencer Hazard debuted last year in order to tell a specific story. One of love and loss. The guitarist and main songwriter of Full of Hell lost his animal companion late in 2024, and while I’m not in the secret of the gods, it feels like Broken Sword, Rotten Shield is a funeral dirge of some sort, to a pure-hearted ally.

I’ve been there myself a couple years ago, it sucks and I 100% understand the need to exorcise the gut wrenching feelings when something like that happens, but still… I didn’t have it on my bingo card. 

This EP features seven songs: one under a minute, three under two minutes, and two under three. Only the closer, To Ruin and the World’s Ending, clocks in at a more conventional four minutes.

On the title track, the blazing speed and chaos of older Full of Hell collides with their catchier, more storytelling-oriented selves. It's a smorgasbord of manic riffs, but exactly halfway through, Spencer Hazard pivots into an alternative rock riff that splits the song cleanly in two, giving Dylan Walker’s passion, urgency, and alienness room to shine. It feels thematically related to Half Life Changelings from Coagulated Bliss,  but only in the way distant cousins are, the kind who don’t speak anymore.

From Dog’s Mouth, A Blessing is performed, I believe, by Dylan Walker and drummer Dave Bland on vocals and it sounds nothing like the title track. At just forty-nine seconds, it's the shortest on the record, a dizzy blast of violence that sounds like a Full of Hell song erupting inside a burning venue while everyone keeps moshing as if nothing's wrong (except you). It’s meant to be felt, not analyzed. A two-step freakout that taps into something I've always loved about Full of Hell: there's a cleansing quality to this kind of ferocity. It blitzes through the gatekeepers of good taste and hits someplace real every time.

I have no idea how they maintain this level of intensity on stage night after night. It must be exhausting, as The Dude would say.

Of course, the follow-up, Corpselight, heads in a whole other direction. It's an atmospheric electronic mood piece that feels glitchy and lo-fi, like video game music that's decaying in real time. Full of Hell aren’t nostalgic exactly, they’re haunted by a past that death made inaccessible but that still lives somewhere inside them. Lament of All Things might be my favorite song on Broken Sword, Rotten Shield. It's the emotional climax: explosive riffing where tiny splinters of melody break through, alarm bells ring out like harbingers, and Dave Bland throws down one of his signature jazz-drums-from-hell performances. I’m not even talking about Dylan Walker at this point, because the otherworldly passion is just a given. He's delivering one of the best performances of his career here.

Mirrorhelm is an interlude where Full of Hell’s trademark noise collides with distorted folk instrumentation and sparse, haunted melodies. I would've been disappointed if they didn’t sneak one of these in on a record with such a heavy thematic pull. It transitions seamlessly into Knight’s Oath, a track that could’ve slotted onto Coagulated Bliss. Mid-tempo, melancholic, featuring dual vocals and drawing from noise rock and '90s alt. It’s a perfect snapshot of Full of Hell in 2025. It's anthemic but profoundly isolated, like the ghost choir from an English tragedy written in a psych ward in 1860. Except heavier. And better.

The closer, To Ruin and the World’s Ending takes another stab at sludge metal. It lines up with Coagulated Bliss cuts like Fractured Bonds to Mecca and Bleeding Horizon, and even calls back to their collaboration with Primitive Man, Suffocating Hallucination. It’s the only track where I found myself wanting a little more chaos, a little more abandon — but the band stays disciplined, sticking to their grim vision for the full four minutes. It’s a fitting ending: crushing enough to mirror oblivion, but still pulsing with feral life.

*

If Coagulated Bliss was the game, Broken Sword, Rotten Shield is the expansion pack where the band steps into the past and witnesses a tragedy that made them who they are. It's both a logical next step and a total surprise.

Full of Hell could go a thousand different directions after Scraping the Divine, and it somehow makes perfect sense that they’d plant one foot in the future and one in the rubble of memory. The shapeshifter keeps shifting, fueled by pain, loss, and the furious knowledge that nothing lasts. I wasn't expecting anything less from one of the most singular bands in extreme music.