Full of Hell write with pain in mind. The Maryland noise-metal mutants have made that much clear across a decade of static-scarred punk, released by labels like Profound Lore, Relapse, and Neurot. Records like Rudiments of Mutilation bludgeon traditional heavy music tropes, grinding familiar sounds from the history of hardcore, death metal, and even more extreme realms into ugly and unsettling shapes. This approach extends to their subject matter, too: over the scraping noise, they scream about the burden of existence, the violence of the world, and the inevitable failure of the flesh.

It’s bleak, but according to vocalist Dylan Walker, that’s the point. In 2013, he told Terrorizer that “Throbbing Lung Fiber”—a particularly unsettling track that describes a family burning to death in their own home—was meant to rattle listeners. “The descriptions in the lyrics about bones snapping in the heat and the smell of burning hair are about just that,” he said. “No message, just meaningless pain.”

In the years since, they’ve lived up to the weightiness of that statement, releasing four studio albums that blur the jagged edges between noise, hardcore, and metal to push the limits of abjection. They’ve occasionally joined forces with other like-minded masochists, collaborating with fellow aggro auteurs like the Body and Merzbow, as well as releasing splits with Code Orange. But each passing record has revealed new dimensions to their sound—adding field recordings and samples and further scouring their riffs with static—which has resulted in the band becoming one of the most menacing heavy bands working.

With each new Full of Hell record comes the tacit agreement to give yourself over to the cacophony. There’s no escape from the agony—an appropriate soundtrack for the decade in which they’ve worked. In this overwhelming world, with its unrelenting pain, their music functions as a mirror; each scream is a reminder that you’re not suffering alone.