Convulse
World Without God
Relapse Records

‘World Without God’ was first released 18 years ago. Shitting crikey, I was 7 or 8 years old – back then I thought metal was just stuff they made tanks out of. Anyway, this re-release has be remastered, repackaged and also includes their “legendary” (I’ll be the judge of that) ‘Resuscitation of Evilness’ demo.

So far, so very much what I was crushingly expecting. The title track is all double-bass pedal, thick nasty guitar chords and the usual phlegm spitting vocal trait you come to expect from death metal. Technically, it’s very impressive – somehow managing to swing towards extreme tightness and scrappy, sporadic bouts of misplaced aggression. Convulse raise a smile with the title of the next track; ‘Putrid Intercourse’ – which I’m guessing details how a person would go about committing necrophilia (unfortunately their vocalist decides to keep that information secret thanks to his “singing” technique). Great guitar solo though. Unfortunately it’s more of the same and really, when you’ve heard one guy vomiting up a kidney over hyper-fast shredding, you’ve heard them all. However, it’s the demos that actually show some progression. ‘Godless Truth’ combines a thrash element with a sludge rock backbone, treading water between the genres brilliantly, and shows some real experimentation in the guitar work, with actual notes being played as opposed to someone smashing their hand against the strings. ‘Resurrection of Evilness’ isn’t bad either, and miles ahead of the album material and actually sounds heavy, as opposed to the quite weak death-thrash that makes up the majority of this. Songs need body, and unfortunately a lot of Convulse’s songs lack this essential criteria.

There’s some beautiful guitar plucking on ‘Powerstruggle of Belief’, offset by a pleasing background riff, but is ultimately ruined by the obsessive dive into “RARARARAGH”-ville. Disappointing.

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Review by Ross Mcdonald