A recent discovery that I’m priapismically excited about is Convulsif, a quartet from Switzerland who have been described by their label as “Jazz Grindcore.” That alone was enough to fire up my interest similar to how a blowtorch ignites a gas tanker, but after sitting down with their latest and fifth (!) album, Extinct, it quickly became clear that the band is much more than that. With influences that smear metal, drone-doom, industrial noise, avant-garde, ambient, electronica, hardcore punk, classical and yes, jazz and grind across a wall of sandpaper and a sound hailing from the murky worlds of GOD, Godflesh, Swans, Naked City, Napalm Death, Painkiller, Boredoms, Neurosis and Cows, Extinct also quickly became one of my favourite albums of the year.
I’m kicking myself when thinking about how it’s taken a noisy music loving noise-nik like myself this long to stumble across this lot – it’s astounding that I hadn’t even heard of the band until now – but better late than never, as they palliatively say. In recognition of this latest discovery and some of the gut-wrenching awesome-ness that is Convulsif and Extinct, we’re presenting an advance look at the band’s latest video for “The Axe Will Break.” When pressed for a bit of context about the video, this is what they hit us back with:
“The video for ‘The Axe Will Break’ comes from the recording of a concert at L’Amalgam. Before, we locked ourselves up for several days to prepare [for] the concerts in this place. Together, we captured all the resonances that surrounded us to transcribe them into sound. The development of this piece is meant to be soothing and bewitching at the beginning to end, after 13 minutes in the abyss of the most virulent noise. We take you by the hand to make you better appreciate the torments of the final storm. This piece is ritual: an enveloping and inexorable heaviness that keeps your soul in torpor. This extreme torrent of sonorous lava intoxicates you and transports you to a parallel world of nothingness. The video is a live recording of a concert that captures the innate energy of the song, which starts out as a smooth, warm trip, slowly unfolding into a torrent of noise. A track like a ritual: all-embracing and inexorable heaviness that keeps the feathery souls where they belong.”
“The Axe Will Break” is actually the second new video to be issued by the band. The first was “Torn From the Stone” which dropped a couple weeks back, but is actually for an album bonus track. But because it’s a video I can’t get enough of, I decided to throw it in here for a look-see as well.
Extinct is out two weeks from tomorrow on Hummus Records.
