Experimentation is an integral part of what has always made the underground an unpredictable beast, but there just aren’t many that are willing to shed their tendencies and truly become lost in the darkness of uncertainty to reach for something they never knew was there. It can be intimidating by all right, yet the rewards are great for those who can dare to take the risks. It takes daring and more than a little bit of an adventurous spirit to find yourself in the pitch-black nothingness of experimental metal and continue to proceed forward. Both Gosudar and Tsygun have begun to make names for themselves with their own caustic brands of intensity, but it’s in the furrows of madness that their union is something to be marveled at for all that it invokes.

Individually, both of these acts are incredibly formidable whose power is not to be denied. Gosudar tends to stalk a particularly carnivorous reach of death metal that’s nigh on caustic while Tsygun occupies its own little pocket dimension which is ever collapsing in on itself as pangs of grind and spats of unexpected groove burrow into your psyche. However, it is here in a joint effort that both acts sought a different approach to eviscerating the very spirits of their poor listeners. While each deliver their usually expected forms of brutality in this split to offer some sense of familiarity for returning listeners that are just looking for more, those moments are far from the main focus of this harrowing experience. It feels as though Gosudar and Tsygun locked themselves in a room, deprived themselves of all their senses, and crafted something that can only be born, molded, and extrapolated from a place of such all-consuming madness that one can only surrender completely unto it in order to have any hope of understanding such insanity for even a brief moment. Without a shred of compromise, that’s what this split is.

Two droning tracks from each band that clock in for a combined total of thirty-four unyielding minutes of aural claustrophobia, it demands to be made clear that these excursions are anything but mere fumbling in the dark. Rather, Gosudar and Tsygun really embodied their more experimental natures and found something that exists within the same space but are constantly at odds with each other for how ravenous, raw, and voracious they are at their core. Yet, they complement each other devilishly well. Self-consuming and downright sinister even as their droning reaches sublime depths as each minute piles on top of each other with riffs, fury, patient menace, and dark energies, Gosudar and Tsygun move as independent units, yet I implore you to see this split and those two specific pieces as extensions of the darkness that both these bands have become one with. The horrific push and pull that goes on for well over half an hour with the demons lurking silently but hungrily in the nothingness as Gosudar and Tsygun wear down your flesh and psyche until you’re prey floating in the void with nothing stopping primal forces from tearing you asunder. Left adrift in that realm devoid of being, it’s only the delicate yet heavy thread laid down by Gosudar and Tsygun that prevents you from true obliteration even as they never once yield in their offensives.

By all accounts, what these bands have achieved here falls well outside of their normal realms of evisceration and madness. Still, what’s accomplished here is naught but intense from top to bottom and the captivating embodiment of what it means to push yourself artistically into an extremely different direction to see what you’re capable of. Wherever Gosudar and Tsygun go next, what they’ve accomplished in this split is sure to follow them wherever and whenever they are with this expedition into nothingness something that the soul cannot simply shake off.

LISTEN to the split on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Gosudar on Facebook here.

FOLLOW Gosudar on Instagram here.

LIKE Tsygun on Facebook here.

FOLLOW Tsygun on Instagram here.