CONVULSING — Perdurance (review)

Album · 2024 · Technical Death Metal

4/5 · 2024-03-04
siLLy puPPy

The blackened disso-death lone shooter Brendan Sloan emerged from city of Sydney but relocated to Adelaide, Australia and is better known as the raging extreme metal maverick CONVULSING, the one-man death metal band who also plays well with others in the disso-death metal band Altars as well as the post-rock band Dumbsaint. As a solo artist CONVULSING has been cranking out a series of albums since 2016’s debut “Errata” and finding a receptive audience along the way. After a six year hiatus the CONVULSING franchise has seen a new release in the form of PERDURANCE emerges in 2024 and showcases Sloan’s propensity for well-constructed technical death metal. While a solo project, CONVULSING becomes a three man band in a live setting.

PERDURANCE is a veritable beast of eight tracks that add up to about 55 1/2 minutes (counting the bonus track on some releases) and showcases Sloan’s focus on dissonant chords and a rather stripped down death metal sound in comparison to full band efforts. While tech death often employs riffing sessions whizzing by at a million kilos per second with as many time signature changes and micro-licks as humanly possible, PERDURANCE showcases a more direct approach to unleash the mangled ugly monstrosity of disso-death with repetitive chords that form cyclical loops, presumably a trait gleaned from Sloan’s post-rock efforts with Dumbsaint. Likewise the blastbeats and guitar wizardry is reserved for small doses rather than an incessant attack. At least in the beginning of the album.

In other words PERDURANCE is as much about atmosphere as it is about death metal which is made all the more apparent by slower clean guitar strums on tracks like “Inner Oceans” that build up dissonant riffs slowly before erupting into guttural growl led frenzies of highly distorted guitar chords from hell strummed in reverse manners. The track simply titled “ - “ is a 3 1/2 minute death ambient track. Yeah that’s a new genre, huh? It’s a dark ambient series of sound build ups but sounds as muddled and claustrophobic as the metal aspects of the album. Serving as an intermission between two halves, the following “Gossamer Pall” picks up speed into heavier and faster death metal territory sounding more like a fully fueled disso-death band at this point the progressive aspects are more apparent with a more developed compositional approach and deviations from the straightforwardness of the first half of the album.

“Shattered Temples” continues with the quickened percussion, more dynamic riffing frenzies and overall more varied compositional texture without sacrificing the apocalyptic mindset set out on the very first track of the album. Saving the best for last, PERDURANCE ends with the 13-minute “Endurance” which showcases CONVULSING’s ability to weave atmospheric-rich textures into disso-death meets post-rock precision without compromising any of the ferocity. The most progressive track of the entire album, this one unleashes a series of twists and turns. This track covers all ground whether it be the post-metal style slower parts or the raging fury of the highly adrenalized manic outbursts of high speed disso-death ferocity. The track nicely ratchets up a series of ideas and allows an organic process of evolution to undergo with more riffing styles presented than the rest of the album combined.

While not on the Bandcamp site, the YouTube version of the album ends with a Porcupine Tree cover titled “A Smart Kid” from the band’s “Stupid Dream” album. CONVULSING turns it into a nearly 8 minute post-metal extravaganza with clean vocals. Very much in opposition to the rest of the album so perhaps it was nixed off the Bandcamp at the last minute because it sounds more like a bonus track than a cohesive part of the album. Not bad though. Overall this is a brilliant new release from CONVULSING especially considering this is a one-man band at least in the studio. While i tend to prefer the more claustrophobic and cavernous forms of disso-death this latest release by CONVULSING certainly scratches the itch. Highly recommended for fans of bands like Pyrrhon, Discordance Axis, Ulcerate, Krallice and Mitochondrion