Words – @ladylane____
Photos – @photo.amai
AMBY DOWNS makes experimental sound that feels less like music and more like lived history. Working with drones, noise, and field recordings, she creates slow, pressurised soundscapes that demand attention rather than comfort. Her work is grounded in place and lineage, confronting colonial histories and intergenerational trauma without softening the edges. Releases like Ngunmal and I Am Holding My Breath use restraint and tension as tools, letting silence and weight speak as loudly as sound. In a genre that often drifts into abstraction, Amby Downs stands out for making ambient music that carries accountability, memory, and purpose.
CONVULSING represents extreme metal at its most unstable and inward-looking, where precision and chaos exist in constant tension. Brendan Sloan’s solo project merges dissonant death metal, black metal, and noise into a sound that feels compressed, volatile, and relentlessly intense. Instead of relying purely on speed or aggression, the music draws its power from density – twisting riffs, fractured rhythms, and arrangements that seem perpetually on the edge of collapse.
From Errata and Grievous through to the long-awaited Perdurance, Sloan refines this approach into something increasingly deliberate and suffocating. The songs are tightly constructed yet emotionally bleak, pairing technical rigor with an overwhelming sense of weight. Perdurance in particular leans into restraint, letting tension and dread slowly accumulate. In a scene often driven by excess, CONVULSING distinguishes itself by using dissonance as architecture and atmosphere as its primary weapon.
SUMAC’s Melbourne debut was less a conventional metal show and more a full‑room sonic immersion. From the opening notes of “Arcing Silver”, the trio enveloped Stay Gold in dense, shifting textures – sound that was as much felt in the body as heard. The performance immediately established an atmosphere of tension and unpredictability, setting the stage for the rest of the set.
“Yellow Dawn” deepened the intensity, layering oppressive low-end pressure over fractured, jagged rhythms, while “Attis’ Blade” tore open the space with abrupt changes and walls of distortion. By the time “Image of Control” closed the set, it was evident that SUMAC had turned heaviness into a living, breathing force. Guitar, vocals, and rhythm were not mere instruments but intertwined threads in a constantly evolving sonic landscape, each moment teetering between structure and improvisation.
The power of the show lay in its control of tension. Silence, repetition, and sudden eruptions were as impactful as volume, demanding focus, patience, and total engagement from the audience. Sumac didn’t deliver spectacle or easy catharsis—they offered an experience: immersive, disorienting, and profoundly visceral. For a city rich in heavy music, this performance proved that extreme metal can expand beyond riffs and breakdowns into pure, transformative sound.
Huge thanks to the crew at Stay Gold, Amby Downs, Convulsing, Sumac and United Front Touring for having us.
