Q & A: Dylan Walker (Full of Hell)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

MARYLAND’S Full of Hell are a five piece making musical chaos that integrates grindcore, powerviolence, noise and more. Embracing the DIY ethic of punk, they have issued a galaxy of splits, EPs, live recordings, other collaborations and six full length albums including this year’s splatterfest Coagulated Bliss. Next month they will be in Australia for a double headliner with drone doom lords Thou. In this wide-ranging interview, we checked in with vocalist Dylan Walker in his car outside a local grocery store.

“We had a thunderstorm and it knocked all the power out,” he says with a grin. “We live way up in the ass-backward woods and without electricity. I don’t even have cell phone service, so I’m at the grocery store.”

He holds up a bag and declares, “I’ve got my Maccas!” before going to on talk about their upcoming visit to Australia.

Dylan Walker: “We’ve been a couple of times before, and it’s always on our wish list to come back, because it’s always such a treat, We just had to wait for the right opportunity and meet the right promoters we could work with, because the last two times friends organised the tour for us, and I feel like I’m inconveniencing friends by asking them to book an entire tour for us. Especially … one of my best friends lives in Canberra. He booked the first one, and I wanted him to do this one, but he’s a school teacher now and you’ve got to think about … you have other priorities, so you can come on the tour and hand out, and my new friend Greg can book the tour. We got hooked up with Greg from United Front, and that’s it.”

Hot Metal: He’s done some great tours. His own band’s pretty good but I think he puts a lot of his energy into touring other bands now.
DW: “Somebody has to, and from my perspective, I’ve noticed a lot of weird, crooked, shady tour bookers down in Australia. They’re not young guys, either. They’ll book a couple of tours, then there’ll be a bunch of cancellations and it turns out they’ve stolen all the money. I can’t remember the names over the years, but I swear I’ve seen like three or four that everyone was going to start asking about tours that turned out to be totally bogus.”

HM: That happened to Warbringer, definitely. That guy ended up leaving the country after that! Now, you worked with some luminaries on the latest album. What was it like working with Ross Dolan (Immolation) and Jacob Bannon (Converge)?
DW: “I’m in a fortunate position to be able to call those guys friends nowadays. They’re two of my heroes for sure – especially Ross. We toured together when we were younger and we were huge fans. We heard they were nice guys, but I just remember being straight-up awestruck at how down-to-earth and hands-on and respectable those guys were. Besides the fact that they’re unbelievable musicians, the music they’re writing today is still so dark and extreme, and so fine-tuned, but as human beings…if you were going to look up to any band, and then meet them and have them exceed your expectations, it’s Immolation. They’re the coolest fucking guys. There’s a few death metal bands of that generation that are like that – there’s a bunch of them. But I’ve had a lot of time with the Immolation guys, and they’re big heroes. And the same goes with the Converge guys. When I was growing up I would always listen to Converge and pay attention to how they did things, and be uncompromising in their vision and be DIY and be a hardcore band that did crazy shit with their music. There’s a lot of inspiration. And meeting those guys was a similar experience in them living up to whatever stupid and lofty expectations I might have personally. I wanted to have six guests on the record – it’s something I always do. They reeled me in and said ‘you can have two’. Two people we look at as, like, big brothers, were those guys, so it’s great!”

HM: Two bands that have always been uncompromising in their vision have obviously been a big influence on you, because Full of Hell is a grindcore band, and it’s hard to get more uncompromising than that.
DW: “When it’s pure, it’s definitely a full assault. There’s a lot of really good American grindcore bands around right now that is pure grindcore.”

HM: There was a time when things could colluded and it went strange and weird but it seems to have gone back to being a more pure artform. What’s it been like for Full of Hell to navigated through that?
DW: “We’re friends with a lot of the grindcore guys, but we’re not super connected to any music scene really. I’ve always hesitated to say we’re grindcore because it always seemed like such a catch-all. We’re more of a hardcore punk band doing all kinds of shit. But as far as the scene ebbing and flowing, that’s for literally everything. It gets washed up, comes back around, is pure. I think right now, from my perspective, every little niche you love in music, art or medium, it exists right now in its best form somewhere. It’s open access. Everyone can make records. There’s no gate with a lock on it. It’s all there for you, on the internet or whatever. So I think it’s a pretty golden time. There’s a lot of really great grindcore right now. There’s this band from DC called Deliriant Nerve who’s fucking crazy. In every single subgenre, there’s premium examples of it somewhere in the world right now. It’s a good time for art. There’s a lot of accessibility. That’s a key.”

HM: I think we are at the peak of accessibility right now. It’s still underground, obviously, but even the underground is easier to access now. You must find a lot of fans discovering you through the internet who may not have even thought they’d be into a band like Full of Hell.
DW: “Absolutely. I think there’s an argument that because there’s such an abundance and ease of access to this kind of music that it’s cheapening it. It’s taking all the money out, or whatever. Obviously I make a living out of being in a band, but I’m on the other side of the spectrum there. I think that’s a good price to pay, and I would go even further and say that, the paradox for a person like myself is that as soon as the money is gone, the people with the wrong intentions would be gone too. I’m all for the money going away. I enjoy free digital access to our music for people. I used to just post our records on MediaFire back in the day before the record was out, just so everybody had it high quality for free, before it came out. I think that accessibility is a good trade-off for some of the profits or whatever. I think it’s a good thing. Kids should be able to find this easily, and enjoy it and express themselves and get up there and take your place. It’s everybody’s stage.”

HM: There’s an argument that because it’s art, people shouldn’t be making money from it at all. It is difficult to make money from art, but you’ve managed to do it. You’re not seeing money as an object, but there’s plenty of others who say that it is difficult to create art and to tour without money behind them. What are your thoughts about that?
DW: “Well, like I said, it’s a paradox. I rely on that money that I get from the band, and we need that money – Australia, for example, it’s so fucking expensive to fly down there. We need money, and I think it’s cool. But I’ve always felt like it’s important to, paradoxically again, lean away from the idea of money if it’s going to compromise what makes your art worth a shit in the first place. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to feed yourself from your art. But there’s a darkness where it can pervert the purity of it. It is a paradox. I don’t have an answer to it. And there are predators. All the streaming services are just like overflowing coffers and the artists get fractions of a penny, or whatever. That’s evil. But artists going direct to fans … enjoy it where you can, and allow people to get your music however they get to it. Like bootlegging … I really don’t want Americans doing it, or kids in the west, in general. I don’t want a British kid, or an Australia kid doing it, but if it’s a kid in Malaysia, or Indonesia or Chile wants to bootleg our shit – I will send them the files! Because why would charge some poor kid in Chile $80 for a t-shirt when he makes $80 a week, or a month.”

HM: That access to your music will hopelessly inspire some other kid to do what you’re doing. Even if it’s not the same, it’s a real pay-off for your art to inspire others to go out and do it.
DW: “I think if there was one person that you made a difference to that went out and made music because of you – that’s so awesome. Infest used to send stencils with the seven inches so you could make your own t-shirts. That’s fucking sick! Coming up through the punk scene, those are the ethics … like Thou, who we’re touring with down there, share those ethics as well.”

FULL OF HELL “WHY, GOD, WHY?” AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2024 with THOU

14/8: Brightside, Brisbane

15/8: Mary’s Underground, Sydney

16/8: The Basement, Canberra

17/8: Stay Gold, Melbourne

18/8: Crown and Anchor, Adelaide

19/8: Stay Gold, Melbourne

22/8: Altar, Hobart