The Convictions
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The Convictions

Seattle, Washington, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2015

Seattle, Washington, United States
Established on Jan, 2015
Band Rock Hardcore

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Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Born Brutal - Convictions Drop New LP"

Sometimes you feel like most of the hardcore releases in the last few years sound like cover albums, a period piece or just straight-up regurgitation of old motifs. Luckily, The Convictions are here to cleanse your palate and serve you up a fresh dose of hopelessness as the meat grinder shredding humanity seems more diligent than ever. Their debut full length, Disengaged, clocks in at just about 20 minutes and no second is spared when injecting you with a gleeful apocalyptic thrash-off. Combining elements of grindcore, blackened thrash and the best in 80s US hardcore, their jackhammer riffs bludgeon the skull into its natural, desperate form.
What first stands out to the listener is that the vocals are – dare I say it – “clean.” But who needs a forced fry scream when you have years of experience grinding the sludge-laden streets of the Pacific Northwest in bands such as Same Sex Dictator, Bad Future and Tracers? If anything, it adds to the sheer madness and unpredictability of their weird, demoralized world. Bringing the angst and imagery down from war-field fantasies in into the cynical day-to-day rat race, Disengaged is an end-of-the-year debut LP that already fits fatally well into the regions hardcore classics. - CVLT Nation


Discography

Disengaged (2017) Snakefork Records 

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Bio

The Convictions’ fourth-wall shattering style of punk has always been a caustic proposition. Like the poison that cures what ails, a sonic arsenic potenized against the forces of psychic alienation, their music seeks confrontation with the dangers of life so as to purge them through direct exposure. Live, the group’s controlled chaos shreds the divide between spectator and performer, while the group’s recorded output blazes with the kind of hair-raising intensity that reaches deep into the limbic system to trigger that flight or fight response. 


Formed by Sioux City Pete and the Beggars’ frontman Peter Philips, drummer Joe Ross and Same Sex Dictator’s Lee Cizek, the legendary underground vocalist, hardcore drummer and pysch-punk guitarist had already begun to establish their places within the ranks of transgressive music when they joined forces to establish an even more radical project in 2015. Drawing additional members from the ranks of Seattle’s punk and metal scene, the band’s initially changing line-up has solidified in recent years around bassist Ana Baez, and the guitarists Nick Paul (former Wolves In the Throne Room) and Casey Dickson. Veterans of the underground scene, and representing its various backgrounds and influences, the band is an amalgam of the cities’ more extreme sonic bent.    


The Convictions are currently readying This Eager Violence of the Heart, their sophomore follow-up to the group’s 2017 LP debut Disengaged. Recorded with Tad Doyle at Witch Ape Studio this past June, The Convictions report they chose the famed Grunge musician and producer due to his reputation for delivering a heavy sound. Though the album was written over a three year period, the band’s counter-balanced approach to creating can be seen throughout. With much of The Convictions’ raw musical material constructed by drummer Joe Ross, the group’s three guitars and a bass also play a critical roll in developing the musical terrain, while frontman Sioux City Pete is behind the twisted poetry at the heart of the material. 


Underpinning the work is Ross’ Hardcore drumming style. Firing off weaponized blast beats and furious cavalcades of erupting rhythm with ruthless expediency, he is joined in the charge by bassist Ana Baez who adds heft to the proceedings with heavy low-end buoyed by Tad Doyle’s production. Additionally, The Convictions’ three-headed guitar attack makes for formidable listening. When asked in particular about the difficulty of composing for three guitars, the band likened the experience to a “digestive system of riffs filtering through, working together.” Describing it as an organic process drawn from each player’s specialty, Paul’s metal shredding approach is joined by Cizek’s noisy harmonic mastery and Dickson’s visceral, angst-filled expression as post-punk squall meets hardcore’s gut-punching churn. 


Narrating this nightmare is Sioux City Pete. Like an outlaw poet or Gnostic preacher on the streets of Babylon, his fire and brimstone declarations burn with an unwavering adherence to his muse, and it would seem she can be quite the cruel task mistress. Committed to this no-holds barred approach to Art, his uncompromising vision just might be the central conviction at the heart of The Convictions. As a punk rock performer, he’s a daunting figure. Taking on the mantel of The Other, his difficult presence stands as a stark reminder of those hard truths we’d often rather forget. Live, you might find him threading his way through the crowd half-naked and raving, smeared in garish white paint like a sadhu covered in cremation ash, with “Fuck Pigs” scrawled across his chest in red lipstick. But most importantly, Pete is a poet, a thoughtful man just as likely to be reading St. Augustine’s City of God as Bataille’s Story of the Eye. 


On This Eager Heart of Violence, The Convictions’ transgressive vision is frighteningly vivid. Songs like “A Violent Life,” “I am the Other,” and “Slitting My Wrists,” find them standing in direct opposition to any sanitized version of reality that would whitewash the brutal facts of living on the margin. This is extreme music, an affront to a reactionary culture of values that seeks our conformity at every turn. Taking aim at an existential malaise that runs deep into the heart of the human experience, ultimately this is a cathartic music that can’t afford you the luxury of indifference.



JG

Band Members