What’s up, nerds? Today I have albums from Full of Hell, Parquet Courts, and Gojira.

2022 is right around the corner and I still have 950 albums to review! But I’m optimistic.

Full of Hell – Garden of Burning Apparitions
(October 1, 2021)

20 minutes and 54 seconds is all you get from the fifth album by noisy grindcore outfit Full of Hell. That’s all you get and that’s all you need.

Grindcore’s purpose is to take you for a fucking ride. Garden of Burning Apparitions is a harsh and vicious, calamitous ride from beginning to end. The drumming is tumultuous. The guitars are restless, constantly cutting around abrupt turns, not sure whether to stick with sharply-edged technical riffing, or thick and sludgy pulsations, or everything in between. There may be a surprise around any corner: a bleating, squealing saxophone here, an atonal acoustic plucking of strings there. Sometimes there’s reverb, a lot of the time there’s feedback. Sometimes the music is so distorted into oblivion that it burrows into the speakers, bubbling and cracking with inhuman frequencies. There are so many goddamn ideas packed into this record that I would think even your grandmother could speak to its diversity.

Typical of grindcore “songs”, most of the tracks don’t crack the two-minute mark. Exceptions include “Derelict Satellite”, featuring three minutes of brutally chaotic screeching and clanging with an overlay of disgustingly sticky static, and the closer “Celestial Hierarch”. And although the lyrics are often intelligible, they’re sophisticated, philosophical and poetic. “The lines are blurring before my waking eyes/What worth has a tarnished soul in a multiverse chasm?” Oh man, I’m weeping already. It’s so beautiful.

This album isn’t going to change anyone’s life, probably, unless you’re a major outcast in your high school. But if you’re craving a quick burst of unbridled, skunky grindcore aggression before moving onto some Lucy Dacus, this is the 2021 album for you.

Early Verdict:

Parquet Courts – Sympathy for Life
(October 22, 2021)

You better believe I was excited about Sympathy for Life when I heard that the band was going full-David Byrne. I’ve been following Parquet Courts since Light Up Gold, and it’s been a real trip keeping up with each new release over the years. I’ve always appreciated the perfect balance they strike between indie rock and post-punk, and their willingness to keep casting a wider and wider net in order to drag in and incorporate additional styles.

I wouldn’t say the band is “lacking urgency” on Sympathy for Life, because that implies that they’re starting to phone it in. Which they aren’t. This record is ambitious. But it’s definitely more relaxed than we’re all used to, as evident by atypical slower-burners like “Marathon of Anger” (the most Talking Heads-y of tracks) and “Trullo”. Semblances of the old Parquet Courts are infrequent, but they’re there. The opener “Walking at a Downtown Pace” has a familiar muscular swagger, and the closer “Pulcinella” is standard fare balladry. “Homo Sapien” is the most obvious imprint of the old band; it sounds like something right out of Sunbathing Animal from 2014.

Almost everything else charts new territory, bringing in strong early-’80s synth-peppered worldbeat characters and rhythms. I can pinpoint direct influences from almost everything. The previously mentioned “Marathon of Anger” is addictive and multi-layered with funky slap bass, hazy guitar lines, atmospheric synthesizer drones, and plenty of electronic bleepin’ and bloopin’. It’s heavily inspired by Talking Heads’ Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues, and during the chorus Andrew Savage sounds like Byrne while Austin Brown sounds like Morrissey. Or the other way around? Hard to tell, they both sound the same. “Just Shadows” is a chunky waltz that sounds like a Dukes of Stratosphear-era XTC song, with psychedelic garage guitar and a VERY Andy Partridge vocal style during its chorus. “Plant Life” is exactly the kind of Adrian-Belew-talking-over-a-hypnotic-worldbeat-groove that you get from “Thela Hun Ginjeet” off of King Crimson’s Discipline. Exactly. It’s a damn near-ripoff, actually, it least in terms of the concept. I like it, though! It gets a pass because I’m biased as fuck.

That’s enough words. This is a fun album! Parquet Courts always delivers.

Early Verdict:

Gojira – Fortitude
(April 30, 2021)

Much to the chagrin of their fanbase, Gojira do not like to make the same album twice. And with Fortitude, they’re leaning harder than ever into their transition from a hazy technical death metal band to a straight alt-rock/stoner metal band. Before long, maybe in three or four more albums, they’ll be indistinguishable from Mastodon…or godforbid, Queens of the Stone Age! Eek!

Nobody should be too surprised, Gojira has been an assorted grab bag of influences from the start. Their djenty riffs drew Meshuggah comparisons. Their groovy swagger drew Pantera comparisons. Their slow, atmospheric sprawls drew Neurosis comparisons. And Gojira could always homogenize these elements masterfully. Fortitude is an optimistic post-pandemic album. It’s a record very much grounded to Earth, bringing desperate laments of turmoil to the table while questing for the brighter side. Like a more technical Katatonia: progressive doom metal, perhaps? Said of Joe Duplantier, the band’s vocalist and producer, in an interview with a French-Canadian publication: “In an uncertain world, chaotic, I choose optimism by default.” The previous studio album, Magma, focused on the grief of loss following the death of Joe and Mario Duplantier’s mother, but now they’re ready to rise above and find the joy in life again. HOW INSPIRING. And if you’re not all-in by the time you reach the powerful, spiritual first lines of “Hold On” (“I’ve been grinding and grinding/Oh, ocean have mercy“), then you’re not going to like it.

This positivity is evident in tracks like “Amazonia” and “The Chant”. The former has the album’s most experimental and distinctive characteristic: the bouncy boinging sound effect. A true psychedelic desert rock experience! “The Chant” is introduced by the previous interlude, “Fortitude”, which sounds almost like a reflective, patient, gospel tune. “The Chant” is entirely clean singing, bringing to mind Opeth’s similar transition from death metal to progressive rock.

There’s plenty of the familiar Gojira to be heard here; lots of intricate drum fills and those slippery guitar breakdowns that I’ve come to associate with the Gojira sound. For people like me who’d rather hear a band continue to evolve in any direction with each successive album, Fortitude is yet another solid entry in a solid catalogue. For people who’d rather have their bands make the same album 25 times, there are millions of other metal bands doing just that as well. Hey, there’s a new Dream Theater for you. Go listen to that smoldering turd.

Early Verdict: