The title of The Body/Full Of Hell collaboration makes a promise that the album delivers tenfold. Released on Neurot Recordings, the LP combines murderous grind, nihilistic sludge, and hopeless industrial to create a black hole of despair. This is the antithesis of feel-good music.
The Body recently put out No One Deserves Happiness, which finds the sludge emperors exploring harsh industrial in the spirit of Godflesh. This new approach is also a defining aspect of One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache. The title track begins with ominous sub-bass reverberations that get swallowed by a nightmare sequence of grind. Full Of Hell’s David Bland propels this torrent with speed-of-light blasts before unleashing a superhuman drum solo over which abrasive noise writhes. “One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache” then devolves into industrial sludge that induces the same level of alienation as a massive chemical plant.
In “Fleshworks,” Bland and Lee Buford’s primitive tom drumming burrows beneath a profoundly creepy sample of a child saying, “I want to die.” Fast electronic beats pulse over this mudslide of toms, and “Fleshworks” morphs again when static female vocals slither across the aural canvas. The Body and Full Of Hell then obliterate Leonard Cohen’s depressive country song “The Butcher,” turning it into a car compactor of pummeling drone. In his destroyed-throat wails, The Body’s Chip King screams like he’s getting his skin ripped off on a drilling rig.
Corrosive walls of percussion make “Gehorwilt” the sonic equivalent to scratching your eyes out, and the ironically titled fifth track, “World Of Hope And No Pain,” is 40 seconds of pure venom. A cruel experiment in harsh noise, “Himmel Und Hölle” could be used as a torturing mechanism. Throughout, Full Of Hell’s Dylan Walker screams like a black-metal preacher giving a sermon on the end of our species. “Bottled Urn” is a power plant of misanthropy that trudges with the mechanical rigidity of Author & Punisher, and closing track “The Little Death” starts with indifferent grinding before transitioning into a nihilistic march. Over anxiety-inducing snare rolls, Chip King yowls, making the song a beckoning for mass suicide rather than a call to arms.
The Body and Full Of Hell are two of the most prolific bands in extreme music. While other groups that release so much material typically lapse into mediocrity at some point, both of these bands are seemingly inexhaustible wells of brilliance. One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache is a perfect example.