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support Fordærv
author AP date 10/09/23 venue Stengade, Copenhagen, DEN

Stengade is on its way to becoming a regular haunt of mine, such is the frequency with which I have been visiting the venue of late. On this warm autumn evening, I am once again headed there to (finally) experience the grinding mayhem of Full of Hell without guests or collaborators, and judging by the heavy and humid air that envelops me inside, I am far from alone in wanting to see the eclectic extreme metal quartet on Danish soil for the first time since 2019. Fordærv, from Silkeborg on the Jutland peninsula, have been given the honour of warming up the crowd with their own brand of straight-up grindcore, and while I haven’t heard the trio’s music before, it is always nice to add fresh blood to my staggering list of bands and artists that I’ve seen live.

Fordærv

It does not take many songs to realise that Fordærv has not come here to push the envelope of grindcore. Their songs are fast, furious, and rarely reach beyond a minute of running length, with the third track in particular no doubt leaving most of the audience wondering what just hit them. It sees drummer Mads Lau laying down impressive rapid-fire percussion, while vocalist Jonas Sandvej blitzes across the stage in erratic charges, bowing down low to lend additional depth to his ferocious growls. “What should we play next?", guitarist Mikkel Lau inquires in its wake, to which a crowd member promptly replies: “You should play FASTER!”, as if Fordærv knew any other way. But, respecting the request, the trio then proceeds to deliver a blasting discharge about Mexican food that clocks in about ten seconds, before moving onto a piece called “Venstreorienteret politisk korrekt økologisk veganer grindcore” (left wing politically correct organic vegan grindcore) off their 2019 outing “Knep dig selv ihjel” (f**k yourself to death) — much to the crowd’s and my own amusement. Indeed, Fordærv’s music may not offer much by way of memorabilia to latch onto, but their dry, sardonic humour works wonders on the lazy Sunday mood that reigns over the venue, instigating a small, yet intense moshpit near the front. There is no question that both the music and banter of Fordærv seems kind of juvenile, but with a set that concludes after just 25 minutes, one never gets to become all that bothered by the lack of lasting value (or even just some kind of point) in the songs. It is a compact, efficient, and entertaining burst of grindcore by the books.

Full Of Hell

Like an omen of the sensory overload that is about to commence, Full of Hell’s concert begins with a deafening wall of feedback, before the four musicians unleash “Halogen Bulb” from their 2017 EP “Amber Mote in the Black Vault”. Strobe lights paint the stage in frenzy, as these 51 seconds of grinding cacophony are drilled into the heads of the audience without respite nor relent… though as the track is brought to an abrupt halt in the end, it reveals the one facet of his outfit that distinguishes from the rest of their ilk: diversity. The songs are interspersed with moments of eerie, electronic ambiance, crafted by vocalist Dylan Walker using his assortment of effect synthesisers and spoken word samples. These intermezzos serve both to allow the audience to catch their breath and to invoke an atmosphere of dread and terror in advance of the next aural assault. One such passage arrives before the third song “Digital Prison”, taken from the band’s 2017 full-length offering “Trumpeting Ecstasy”, a distorted, spine-chilling rant leading into another staggeringly brutal piece of grindcore that clocks in just 41 seconds of runtime.

“It’s pretty nice up here, huh? Nice standard of living, low crime, equal opportunity… Yeah, congratulations!”, Walker then offers in a stark contrast to his fiendish antics during the songs, professing his admiration for the Nordic countries and our (general) lack of the systemic societal issues that plague their native United States. It also serves as a reminder that Full of Hell’s music is rooted in the hardcore punk ethos of sticking it to the man, and the nearly sold out crowd packed into the venue tonight is more than happy to join them in doing exactly that in the likes of “Crawling Back to God”, which delivers a scathing critique of religion via Walker’s customarily cryptic lyricism. There is a reek of pure, unadulterated energy floating around this place, with each song opening a new dimension of extreme sonic exploration. There seems to be a fresh vocal style, a different guitar picking technique, or an unpredictable rhythm in all of the tracks, constantly keeping the audience on their toes, piquing their intrigue. This is so different to Fordærv’s opening set, despite the two bands at least ostensibly residing within the same genre.

Walker’s growls are mixed too low for my liking, often drowning beneath the crushing weight of Spencer Hazard’s guitar riffs, Sam DiGristine’s bass lines and the punishing drums of Dave Bland, but in honesty, it is not a huge loss for music in which the primary goal is to generate as much noise, and as much dissonance as is the case in tracks like “Rainbow Coil” off 2019’s “Weeping Choir”. Indeed, it is a borderline maddening song, one that accurately reflects Walker’s story about a sound tech at one of the band’s past concerts, who — likely under the influence of MDMA — mixed the bass guitar so high his eyelids were vibrating. None of the band’s longer and more explorative creations have made it onto tonight’s setlist, so the concert steamrolls forward at a breakneck pace, intensifying with each passing second. It feels so goddamn unhinged — an impression strengthened by one of the guitarists’ dangling his instrument upside down like an axe, swaying it from side to side as though he were about to decapitate someone upfront following “Reeking Tunnels” off 2021’s “Garden of Burning Apparitions”. Perhaps the best way to describe Full of Hell’s concert tonight is as a tribute to chaos in its purest form. Certainly, that is what the crowd receives and enthusiastically participates in for the duration of this excellent, albeit somewhat too brief, 45-minute concert.

Setlist:

• 1. Halogen Bulb
• 2. Asphyxiant Blessing
• 3. Digital Prison
• 4. Crawling Back to God
• 5. Bound Sphinx
• 6. Vessel Deserted
• 7. Bone Coral and Brine
• 8. Silmaril
• 9. Rainbow Coil
• 10. Burning Apparition
• 11. Eroding Shell
• 12. Reeking Tunnels
• 13. Aurora Leaking
• 14. Amber Mote
• 15. Barb and Sap
• 16. Gnawed Flesh