The very idea of a second full-length collaboration between the Body and Full of Hell seems laughably redundant. Just last year, the two bands reached across the aisle of experimental metal subgenres for the malevolent and strong One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache, an overwhelming outburst that distilled and forcibly synthesized what had long been best about both bands. The depth-charge doom of Portland duo the Body supplied the foundation, with drums that rattled like cannon fire and guitars that groaned as if from an abyss. The menacing grindcore of Maryland quartet Full of Hell shot and scattered across that frame, with blast beats arriving unannounced and high-treble riffs jutting from the din. The pitched squeals of the Body’s Chip King and the feverish vitriol of Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker made for excellent foils, just as both bands’ embrace of electronics allowed one to warp the other. It was a powerful doom-and-grindcore hybrid, built on a mutual fondness for overloading the senses and the speakers at every appropriate moment. So, why do it again?
But Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light bests its predecessor by doing something much different—acknowledging the fundamental rift between the bands’ respective styles and flooding the valley between them with all kinds of stunts, risks, and tricks. Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale, for instance, helms a drum orchestra during “Our Love Conducted With Shields Aloft,” a riot of sound so aggressive it would make John Zorn blush. Full of Hell bassist Sam DiGristine even adds squawking soprano saxophone at the close of “Light Penetrates.” Harsh noise outbursts, stroboscopic electronic editing, drum & bass beats: The Body and Full of Hell lace them throughout Heavy Light, unexpected oases in a disorienting musical minefield. If Ache was an obvious intersection between these two prolific and restless bands, Heavy Light documents wild detours taken to get back to the same place.
The Body and Full of Hell are avid collaborators, and they funnel those collective experiences into these eight tracks. “The King Laid Bare” combines both bands’ respective doom and grindcore powers, but buttresses it with a bludgeoning four-on-the-floor beat. King’s screams and Walker’s growls crisscross frantically, a duet for broken angels. Lined with feedback and caked in static, closer “I Did Not Want to Love You So” is an uncommon exercise in restraint, both bands locked into a dirge that terrorizes only through suggestion. In a sense, it’s a heavy metal reprise of the Haxan Cloak’s “Excavation” suite. The Body and Full of Hell at last manage to make one another more interesting and involved.
While Heavy Light itself is a strange delight, there’s an implicit lesson to these eight tracks that’s perhaps more important and enduring: For a decade, the Body have sometimes seemed like the most absurdly dark band around, whether that meant appearing armed in promotional photos, naming a record No One Deserves Happiness, or putting Japanese terrorist Shoko Asahara on T-shirts that also read “Hate All Life.” On the surface, they’ve never seemed for the faint- or light-hearted. But on stage and in conversation, Lee Buford and King are playful and even cartoonish, two fundamentally approachable people who explore the dark to share the light.
Heavy Light might be their clearest recorded indication of that complex personality, of how there’s often a sense of zeal and color in what seem like obscenely dark moments. The Body and Full of Hell sound delighted while making this record, new partners becoming comfortable enough to admit just how weird they are. Yes, Heavy Light is destructive music, streaked with shrieked lyrics about prey and death, age and tears. But it’s also an inspiring, instructive record, too, where two brutal bands find solidarity and something to celebrate in the darkness. Even if every thought here isn’t complete, Heavy Light is as exciting as either band has ever been. A second collaboration between the Body and Full of Hell seemed unnecessary; the third, somehow, now seems imperative.
