When Sound Becomes Prayer: Saleeha & TVISB's Bear This Suffering With Grace as reviewed by Mark Jenkins.

Some albums arrive with fanfare. Others slip in quietly, carrying the weight of unspoken conversations between artists who've finally found their shared language. Bear This Suffering With Grace, the collaborative debut between Melbourne's Saleeha and TVISB, belongs firmly in the latter category—a record that feels less like a collection of songs and more like documentation of an ongoing spiritual dialogue.

Set for release via Self-Proclaimed Deity in July 2025, this isn't music that demands your attention so much as it slowly, inexorably draws you into its gravitational pull. The album blends guitar, voice, and electronics into a series of evolving sonic textures that move through elements of industrial minimalism, dark ambient, and devotional music.

The Art of Unforced Collaboration

What makes this partnership compelling isn't just the sensory result, but the process that birthed it. Instead of following traditional song structures, the album grew from a long exchange of ideas—vocal sketches, ambient layers, experimental drones, and guitar improvisations—gradually forming a body of work that feels both expansive and focused. 

The album's power lies in its ability to pull you completely under. The Hollow Husks of Those Defeated serves as a haunting entry point—its drone elements creating space for the brooding magnificence of Visions of What Could Be to unfold, ultimately preparing you for the post-metal introspection of Solastalgia. It's a triptych that works best when experienced as a continuous meditation.

There's something refreshingly honest about how Saleeha describes their approach: "There was no fixed idea, just an unspoken language we found in the process. The more we leaned into that, the stranger and more honest it became." It's rare to hear artists admit to not knowing where they're headed—and rarer still to hear them embrace that uncertainty as creative fuel.

Guitar as Architecture, Voice as Weather

Saleeha's guitar work is central to the album's shape: spare, tactile, and sometimes stark, it cuts through or dissolves into the surrounding soundscapes, grounding even the most abstract moments. This isn't the guitar as lead instrument so much as guitar as architectural foundation—something solid you can orient yourself by, even when everything else is shifting around you.

Meanwhile, Saleeha's voice—at times clear and immediate, at others processed and obscured—interacts with TVISB's dense, metallic sound design, creating a push and pull between the intimate and the overwhelming. It's this tension that gives the album its emotional heft. TVISB's electronics don't simply accompany Saleeha's more organic elements—they interrogate them, challenge them, sometimes threaten to overwhelm them entirely.

A Document of Becoming

TVISB reflects on their process: "There was an implicit agreement not to force shape onto the material. The record is a document of that unfolding." This philosophy permeates every moment of the album. These aren't songs crafted to fit predetermined moulds, but rather sonic organisms that evolved according to their own internal logic.

The statement piece and lead single, The Thick of the Bough, offers a quick glance at this interplay, serving as both entry point and microcosm of the album's broader approach. It's a track that rewards close listening—each element occupying its own space while contributing to something larger than the sum of its parts.

Context and Resonance

Knowing that Saleeha has been described as combining "the desert-like stability and imposingness of Earth, the deep, iconic darkness of Swans, and the experimentalism of Sunn O)))" while creating "something equally diverse and strange, yet, genuinely warm", this collaboration feels like a natural evolution rather than a departure.

The album arrives at a time when many listeners are hungry for music that doesn't rush toward resolution, but rather is comfortable existing in spaces of uncertainty and transformation. Bear This Suffering With Grace offers exactly that—not answers, but better questions.

Final Thoughts

This is challenging music in the best sense: not difficult for the sake of difficulty, but uncompromising in its vision. It asks for your time, your attention, your willingness to sit with discomfort and let meaning emerge gradually. In return, it offers something increasingly rare—music that feels necessary rather than simply enjoyable.

The album's dense, interconnected nature makes it essential listening from first track to last—anything less than a complete playthrough shortchanges its carefully constructed arc.

For those drawn to the intersection of devotional practice and experimental sound, to the places where industrial textures meet human vulnerability, Bear This Suffering With Grace represents something vital. It's a reminder that collaboration at its best isn't about compromise, but about finding the spaces where individual voices can speak truths they couldn't access alone.

Essential listening for fans of: Earth, Swans, Sunn O))), Tim Hecker, Fennesz or Machinefabriek
Best experienced: In solitude, with good headphones, when you have time to let it unfold

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Bear This Suffering With Grace will be released July 18, 2025 via Self-Proclaimed Deity, with vinyl limited to 150 copies:

https://self-proclaimeddeity.bandcamp.com/album/bear-this-suffering-with-grace

Sonic Architect Links:

https://www.instagram.com/saleeha___/

https://www.instagram.com/tvisbnoise/

https://www.instagram.com/selfproclaimed_deity/

Visual joy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVlr4-SbvWI