Today we’re honored to unveil the onset of your own oblivion, and Finnish funeral doom titans Convocation officially release their soul-crushing sophomore LP “Ashes Coalesce” and we’re ecstatic today to unveil the beast in full for your sorry soul to witness as it gets consumed and devoured by one of the most lightless and suffocating slabs of aural torment you will encounter all year. Behold….
Funeral doom remains somewhat of a novelty, perpetually through the ages, always a niche excellence that (thankfully) has never become exploited for any bandwagon trends. Its extremity, innate exaggerated traits, and inaccessibility has rendered it a cult object to exalt finality and one’s most crippling personal struggles (depression, self-loathing, loneliness, abandon, isolation, hopelessness) while exploring sonic realms that to this day remain cryptic, enigmatic, and even baffling. With long songs, oppressive atmospheres, dismally slow tempos and abstract song structures you kind of have to hate yourself a bit to truly and fully enjoy it, or, to say the least, you must enjoy finding solace in the struggle of being constantly pulled, in slow motion, toward oblivion, and being suffocated while doing so, almost like you’re being pulled apart by a black hole. You must find meaning in purpose in seemingly insurmountable trial and in being faced with excruciating processes and situations…
This is what it feels like to sit down with Convocation’s new album “Ashes Coalesce“, a crowning achievement in the genre, and a monumental and lightless slow-moving march toward total oblivion and loss of self. In true adherence to the genre’s most revered and celebrated traits, Finland’s Convocation celebrate their homeland’s towering funeral doom tradition (Skepticism, Thergothon?), reimagine it, reinvent it, and just catapult it into the future, stronger and more dismal and extreme than ever. Formed by members of Desolate Shrine and Dark Buddha Rising, you know these guys know how to plasmate the dark death metal and dismally paced sonic misery craft, and with Convocation they take these skills to a whole new level of enormity and extremity. To say that “Ashes Coalesce” is immense is understatement. To say that it is hopeless is also an understatement. To say that’s it’s just monumentally oppressive is basically just calling it by its name. This album embodies all those things and then some, placing the listener at the center of their own personal black hole from which there will be no escape beyond slow, agonizing, and seemly endless crawling consummation that will dismember their soul at snail pace so they remember every agonizing second of it.
The ridiculously crushing LP is officially released today July 3 2020 via Everlasting Spew in Europe (CD/LP/shirts and digital), via Dawnbreed Records (cassette), and via Sentient Ruin (vinyl for North America). The only light you will see will be the one slowly being sucked out of you.
