Convulsing To The Sounds Of Hell
Convulsing‘s split with Siberian Hell Sounds was just released mere hours ago, and already it is blowing minds…
As alluded to back in July when he dropped in for our second ever Friday Guest List, Convulsing’s first new material since 2016’s psyche-shattering debut Errata has arrived in the form of a split with fellow Australian band Siberian Hell Sounds. The two song/40+ minute split was released earlier today through the talent-accumulating local label Art As Catharsis and is really something to behold.
Siberian Hell Sounds
Prior to the announcement of this split I was not familiar with Siberian Hell Sounds, and although I do remember giving some of Svengali a cursory listen, my shithouse memory faculty (yes, just the one unfortunately) did not allow me to recall whether or not it went this damn hard. The band’s contribution to the split (“The Breath Of The Beast”) is an abrasive 20 minute barn-burner, and somewhat contrary to the band’s chill-inducing name, seems to possess an unrelenting desire to invoke the flames of hell itself. Guitarist Dan Young’s note choices bear traces of those employed by INRVI (VI, Aosoth), however in a more brooding manner, often reciprocating the vocal intensity. Palpable rage persists throughout the entire track, and rarely a moment passes where the tension isn’t being amplified. So much so that the song itself seems to implode under its own weight, vanishing into the black without a trace.
Convulsing
Now on to the Convulsing side of the split. Put simply, “Engraved Upon Bleached Bone” is a jaw-dropping expanse of sound. Somehow condensing the amorphous cloud of insanity that was Errata into one 20-minute track, Brendan Sloan has followed up by further prising open the aperture into the black beyond, exposing deeper rifts than ever before. Within the chasms of this inverse dimension lies scathing dissonance, sulphurous hatred, spectral atmospherics, and the rumbling onset of cataclysm itself; essentially everything you could ask for to end the year and/or time itself.
Last night I asked Brendan if he’d like to briefly share some insight into the song’s inspiration, to which he had this to say –
Much like “Errata” was, “Engraved…” is a direct product of the pressures that were weighing on me in the first half of the year. It’s a loud, brash hammer swung at the people that caused it. A bilious curse. A little trite to say, but it’s really a hate filled song. I was and still am fucking boiling with fury about a certain event (and all the deceit and treachery that lead up to it). It just so happened that Dan insisted we do something together at about the same time (I initially told him my tank was empty), and so within about three weeks I had the totality written, recorded and as you hear it. Siberian Hell Sounds then pulled off the longest and best work in their history in unity with me, and here we are. Two very different ways of conveying the same; violent death to an enemy.
Pick up the split now through Art As Catharsis Records‘ Bandcamp page, where it is currently being offered at Name Your Price, on vinyl, or in a mad T-Shirt package deal. Find Convulsing and Siberian Hell Sounds on their respective Facebook pages.
