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“Sect’s 4th LP is about a political plague swept in worldwide under the chaos of a literal & ecological one. Plagues Upon Plagues faces a mournful new reality: the profound loss of lifelong battles in an unraveling civilization.”

Sect have a lot on their minds. With the release of their brand new single, “New Low” and the promise of Plagues Upon Plagues, the follow up full-length to 2019’s Blood of the Beasts, Sect explore the intersection of issues which have cascaded over us for the last five years, the “plagues” of the title referring to the literal pandemic, and the metaphorical plague of the political state and the rise of fascism.

Comprised of an international cast of stellar musicians, who cut their teeth in a formative moment of political, cynical, antagonistic extremes, Sect unites Scott Crouse (Earth Crisis, Tooth & Claw) & Jimmy Chang (Undying, Catharsis) – guitars, Steve Hart (Day of Suffering, Mania For Conquest) – bass, Andy Hurley (Fall Out Boy, Racetraitor) – drums and Chris Colohan (Cursed, Unwell) – vocals. They released No Cure For Death in 2017 and Blood of the Beasts in 2019 and now, their latest for Southern Lord titled Plagues Upon Plagues will be released 7th June 2024.

Plagues Upon Plagues opens with the bereft waves of “No Uncertain Terms”, a side of the band we haven’t seen before. Vocalist Chris Colohan describes this album as “a funeral rather than a trial”, the activism of previous releases fading to sorrow and grief. “Our scene has already been screaming about the threat of an ecological breaking point and the looming threat of recurrent fascism throughout our whole lives,” says Chris. “When both come to pass at the same time and you get the exact world you fought never to see, there are no more alarm bells to ring. You’re just burying your dead. It’s mournful.”

Lead single “New Low” follows with the advent of marching drums, a funereal procession for the world we hoped to build. There’s frantic horror on the album too, with the track “Drowning in Sorrows” taking a look at the ways in which we numb ourselves as a society. “#ForeverHome” is a bitterly angry track about how people used animals for both narcissistic virtue signalling and one-way comfort in the pandemic, and abandoned them en masse just as selfishly when social life came back. Speaking to their straight-edge principles and how that continues to feed into their songwriting, Chris says, “the only kind of straight edge songs I’m interested in writing are dynamic ones that address human realities that you don’t have to be straight edge to engage with.”

Chris speaks more specifically about the collective behaviours which he observed society defaulting to in the thick of uncertainty – opportunism, profiteering, denial, accelerationism, sabotage. “The first five weeks of the pandemic told me more about where we’re at and where we’re headed than five decades of life, and it rendered most idealism irrelevant, regardless of how selectively we remember it in retrospect.”

The outlook is bleak, but music helps. “We’re barreling towards the next mass atrocity just as the last century’s fade into the past,” says Chris. “I’ve definitely had to let go of the ideal of survival in the wake of the last few years. Wasn’t the world we wanted to see but with all the checks and balances this thoroughly defeated, it’s going to play out however it does from here. Changing any minds at this point is kind of irrelevant – that’s largely the point of this album and the challenges we had writing it.”

Drums for the album were tracked with engineer Justin Phelps in Portland, OR at The Hallowed Halls. Guitars and bass were tracked at Scott’s home studio and Chris’ vocals were recorded at the old Online sieradenwinkel warehouse in Yarralumla, NC – a makeshift vocal booth was set up in an aisle of shirts. Kurt Ballou at God City mixed the record.

On Plagues Upon Plagues, Sect pierce through the veil of complacency, forcing listeners to confront uncomfortable truths about the fragility of our world.  The band wields their sonic arsenal like a prophetic warning and with raw vocals and uncompromising lyrics, they confront the harsh realities of existence in these tumultuous times.  As society teeters on the brink of chaos, Sect’s cold hard statement resonates with an urgency that cannot be ignored.

1. No Uncertain Terms
2. New Low
3. Drowning In Sorrows
4. Zerzan Wept
5. Forever Home
6. The Lovers of Life
7. Inventory
8. Six Black Lines

Full of Hell burst forth with incredible force from the small, dagger-shaped city of Ocean City, Maryland, 15 years ago. Over five full-lengths, five collaborative full-lengths, and countless splits, EPs, singles, and noise compilations, they’ve evolved at extraordinary speed, their music becoming more complicated and technical without ever slowing down or losing its soul. Everything on a Full of Hell album feels like a blur: smears of guitar, harsh noise shaken like gravel in a bag, singer Dylan Walker’s snarl and bite carrying him into outer space or into the core of the earth. They’re coiled, interlocking, impossible to penetrate, and they move with alarming speed.

They have now reached terminal velocity. Having created their own context, they’re now able to walk around within it, to survey its terrain, to visit far corners and see who’s nearby. Coagulated Bliss sounds like Full of Hell, but it’s nothing like any Full of Hell record that’s come before it. These songs are trimmer, less freighted with anxiety, more interested in opening up than speeding away. Its bile is sometimes funneled into traditional song structures. It never shies away from the extreme harsh noise, unrelenting spirit, and pitch-black sadness of previous Full of Hell records; if anything, the leanness of these songs makes them feel even heavier. Nevertheless, there are tracks here you might find yourself whistling hours after listening. It’s an extraordinary and unexpected evolution in sound for a band who made their name on rapid metamorphosis, and it’s the logical endpoint of everything Full of Hell has covered so far. “I wanted to try to take every aspect of what we’ve done from previous releases and integrate it into this one,” guitarist Spencer Hazard says.

Coagulated Bliss was written and recorded shortly after the band completed When No Birds Sang, their collaborative album with Nothing. Working with the Philadelphia shoegazers gave Full of Hell new insight into the emotional and artistic power of classic pop songwriting, and to the importance of following a song where it wants to go. “That was a good experience of learning how to find what actually services a song,” Hazard says. “Even with Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home, even when we’ve had an extreme grindcore influence, I still wanted it to be catchy.” Walker also cites the band’s work with The Body for helping him to “recognize that there was value in pop music.” Accordingly, Coagulated Bliss features some of Full of Hell’s strongest songwriting: Gone is the frenetic flailing of Garden of Burning Apparitions and Weeping Choir; in its stead is a richer, thicker sound, one that’s considerably less ornamented—and somehow heavier than ever.

These songs feel huge, totemic, groundshaking. In “Gelding of Men,” the entire band hammers away at one chord, stomping it into the ground at mid-tempo, blasts of horns helping to push.The numbskull stomp of “Doors to Mental Agony” sets up a circle pit, blasts it apart with a grindcore chorus, then slides away on a slanted riff. In the title track, they bounce back and forth on a thick groove, punctuated with occasional cowbells and scratched up by Walker’s scream, barrel into a pummeling chorus, then jump back out onto the dance floor.

While the focus on songwriting already makes Coagulated Bliss the most grounded album in Full of Hell’s catalog, it’s also the first Full of Hell record that tries in earnest to reflect the world around it—not in some broad, monotony-of-evil way, but the everyday horrors of life in small town America. Three of the four members of the band were raised in Ocean City. Hazard and Bland still live there, while Walker is located in central Pennsylvania and bassist Samuel DiGristine relocated to Philadelphia. “The American dream is small towns,” Hazard says. “But anyone that’s grown up in a small town realizes it’s just as fucked up in a small town as it is in a big city—if not more, because it’s more condensed.”

Walker’s lyrics have always framed their suffering with what he calls “fantastical, metaphorical shit,” but on Coagulated Bliss his writing is clear and direct. The album’s title is meant partly to reflect the idea of the over-pursuit of happiness leading to misery—whether in addiction, greed, or anything else. “Your happiness is just out of reach and you don’t know why,” he says. “Too much of this bliss, you think you’ve found your endpoint, but it’s really just this small, tiny, little thing that’s going to ruin your fucking life. And that could be anything.” Much of the album is rooted in the band’s own experiences. “A hundred dead ends, a thousand dead friends,” Walker screams on “Doors to Mental Agony.” “I hear their howling, I hear them weeping.” There are corpses slicked with morning dew, “false balms for deep wounds,” numb failures, thieves in the night and killers in the dark. There are many trackmarks; there are many dirty needles.

The album’s viciousness and Walker’s clear reading of the world around him might scan as misanthropy—“humanity to blame,” he concludes after running through the ways the earth is “riddled with sores” in “Gasping Dust”—but it comes from a place of disappointment that’s driven by a deep love for people and life and the world. “There’s not a lot of anger, to be honest,” he says. “I’ve never felt anger when we’re playing, ever. It feels like electricity that’s built up in my body that has to get out. But I feel more profoundly sorrowful than I ever do anger.”

The world may be in a constant state of bitter flux, but Full of Hell have never sounded more at home in it.“We’ve shed any kind of ‘do we belong in this space, what do people expect of us,’” Walker says. “The joy is in the pursuit.” The loosening of their grip on the direction of their music has made it feel paradoxically closer to the bone. “People tend to burrow themselves so deeply into things they love,” Walker says. “It’s too much of a good thing, and it almost cheapens it.” By paring back their sound, Full of Hell aren’t just finding a new way forward: They’re proving that a little bit less of a good thing can add up to so much more.

Coagulated Bliss was recorded at Developing Nations in Baltimore by Kevin Bernstein, mixed by Taylor Young at The Pit Recording Studio in Van Nuys California and mastered by Nick Townsend of Infrasonic Sound in Los Angeles California. All artwork by Brian Montuori - Paintings made in Los Angeles, CA from June-December 2023 using oil, acrylic, enamel, feathers, paper, hair and ink on canvas. Full of Hell is Spencer Hazard (guitar/electronics), David Bland (drums/vocals), Samuel DiGristine (bass/sax/vocals), and Dylan Walker (vocals/electronics/lyrics), with new guitarist Gabriel Solomon joining following the album’s completion. Coagulated Bliss is out April 26 via Closed Casket Activities.

Vinyl Colors
100 - Clear with Glitter and Blue & Orange Splatter (Friends Press)
300 - Glow In The Dark Green (CCA Exclusive)
300 - Clear with Blue and Orange Smoke (Rough Trade Exclusive)
300 - Golden Nugget (Zia Records Exclusive)
500 - Neon Green, Black and White Segments 
500 - Neon Yellow, White and Green Mix (Indie Retail Exclusive)
500 - Black with Red cross and White Splatter (Tour Exclusive)
700 - Pink, Brown and White Mix (Deathwish Exclusive)
700 - Neon Orange, Blue and White Mix 
1500 - Clear with Splatter

Second Pressing
1000 - Orange, Yellow & Black Segment

Track Listing:
01. Half Life Changelings
02. Doors to Mental Agony
03. Transmuting Chemical Burns
04. Fractured Bonds to Mecca
05. Coagulated Bliss
06. Bleeding Horizon
07. Vomiting Glass
08. Schizoid Rupture
09. Vacuous Dose
10. Gasping Dust
11. Gelding of Men
12. Malformed Ligature