REISSUES AS A LEARNING TOOL: CONVULSE’S WORLD WITHOUT GOD

Gotta be honest: I didn’t know Finland’s Convulse before the nice people at Relapse announced they were reissuing the band’s 1992 full-length, World Without God, with a 1990 demo, the awkwardly titled Resuscitation of Evilness, thrown in for good measure. And this is why I love reissues: remastering and repackaging and all that shit is good for completests, but they’re awesome for exposing certain schmucks – in this case, myself – to some really awesome shit we somehow failed to previously discover.

The type of death metal Convulse play probably won’t shock anyone. Let’s be real here: the band is called Convulse, the album is called World Without God, it originally came out in the early 90s, and the cover art looks like that. If you put it on expecting something that sounds like Lacuna Coil, well, step right up and sign your contract with Victory Records, you rocket scientist, you.

What listeners will hopefully take away from Convulse, then, is the quality of their work. Convulse are one of those bands that can balance actual song structure with an ability to repeatedly bash you in skull with another skull. The riffs are always memorable, consistently compelling the listener to convul… uh, move around and stuff. There’s plenty of grindy blast shits and all that good stuff, but the band is at their most effective when they’re at their most elephants marchingest. It’s when the sludge feels like it’s coming to a halt that you really, really begin to feel suffocated.

Relapse will reissue World Without God on January 19. If you’re like me and you had no idea who this band was ’til just now, definitely check it out. And if you did already know them, well… do you know where your copy is? Are you sure? Maybe you should go check. Go check.

(three and a half outta five horns)

-AR