Both hailing from the San Francisco area, Deafheaven and Bosse-De-Nage have each in their own way crafted unique blackened sounds that take their black metal influences into interesting directions, Deafheaven with their blend of instrumental rock and hardcore filtered through an epic BM sound, Bosse-De-Nage with the sweeping math-rock elements and strains of post-hardcore running through their atmospheric blastscapes. Definbitely make for a good pairing on this vinyl-only split, with each band offering up one long track that takes up their respective sides.

For their side, Deafheaven's choice of Mogwai's "Punk Rock / Cody" as a cover song makes sense, as there's always been an element of Mogwai's dynamic post-rock in Deafheaven's often sprawling music. Here, they transform the original into something more sinister, filtered through the band's blackened brand of post-hardcore heaviness while retaining the original's explosive power. Gorgeous use of piano early on leads the song to the explosive distorted wall-of-guitar heaviness, blackened shrieks joining up with the crushing melodic riffage, infusing the song with a newfound doom-laden atmosphere. The ringing melodic clean guitars and sheets of melting distortion that really start to take over later on remind me of the woozy roar of MBV's Loveless when the band is at their loudest, and this later shifts into a majestic wall of tremolo guitar that feels both frostbitten and full of heartache, later dropping out as the song drifts out with the sounds of distant shrieking vocals and delicate guitar notes. It's pretty great, definitely an example of a band effectively taking another's song and transforming it into something new.

Then Bosse-De-Nage respond with their own epic "A Mimesis Of Purpose", starting off with the sound of rolling marching snares beneath hushed vocals and gorgeous maudlin violins and fragile guitar melodies, a stirring, achingly pretty sound that suddenly changes into a much darker, more sinister black metal-esque attack, buzzing leads and swarming blackened tremolo guitar taking over for a moment before it explodes into a strange, off-kilter blast of strangely arrhythmic black metal, harsh screams stretching out over the deceptively pretty guitar hook while the drummer pounds out an odd, off-time breakdown amid the more straightforward blastbeats. This strange churning melodic black metal is laced with moments of mournful beauty and glimpses of hellish chaos, epic and violent and intensely moving as the band moves convulsively to the soaring finale.

Comes in a printed die-cut DJ style sleeve.