He sat with shoulders hunched and dragged a rusty knife across a large chunk of slate. The blade screamed with every pass, and yet he found something calming in the action; it placated him, transporting him to an elevated state of concentration. It was during these times, safe in his hole at dusk, that he felt neither alone nor accompanied, for while there was indeed no-one around – it had always been his intention to settle away from their prying eyes – he was far from isolated.

Just metres above, the gentle pulse of the traffic as it passed overhead was so regular in its rhythm that it dipped in and out of the darkest recesses of his subconscious mind like the rise and fall of his own breath.

He thought about the recent months and how much he'd accomplished. The decision to leave his home hadn't come easily but his confidence had grown with every step. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine it now. It would still be there, of course – its wooden awnings rotting in the rain; its curtains scattered across the lawn like dreams to the wind.

But this journey he was undertaking – the one he'd wanted so badly that it stained his every thought – wasn't really geographical, and the improvement in his work was an undeniable fact. It pained him to call to mind the clumsiness of his preceding efforts. They seemed oafish and uncouth, and he now considered his endeavours seminal and radical, if not also beautiful. Alas, the papers were littered with words of a different tack – "ferocious", "inhumane", "beastly" – but this was to be expected given the coarseness of his critics.

It was later now. He sat just back from the road, enveloped in the darkness of the night around him and listened to the steady footsteps that approached. In the emptiness of the air they were constant, cavernous and reverberant. There was no turning back now. He could never go back, no matter how comforting the memories of his old abode. There was simply too much to do. The steps quickened; they were closer and almost upon him.

He tightened his grip on the handle of his blade.

It was time. He was ready.

When the guys from Melbourne's International Society of Lust and Revenge found themselves without a singer one fateful afternoon, they did what any self-loathing metalhead in the same situation would do. They whinged for a while then quit... before reforming the very next morning in a moment of clarity over bacon and eggs.

Armed with an ambitious manifesto to scrap their songs and channel their efforts into creating a sound dripping as much with chilli sauce as with vitriolic violence, our heroes set out on a pilgrimage to find a man capable of enduring the grating throat mutilation none of them were that keen upon doing to themselves.

For nine long months, they trudged the internet's most barren band forums looking for their Golden Buddha and found nothing. They almost gave up but for the words of Tripitaka ringing loudly in their ears from Monkey Magic season two: "Find him... or you'll have to get jobs!"

Tired, hungry and with no more cash to blow on double Quarter Pounders, Jake trudged home to find an email from a young Latino named Linden Audino. Digging deep into his mental recesses, Jake remembered him from a party about six months ago. Like a young Banderas, Linden had carried his giant lungs across the room with a self-assurance that Jake had found striking, if not rather attractive, and Jake had fired him an email the very next morning inviting him to try out. Now, half a year later, Linden was finally coming over.

Gathering at the House of Thumbs, the band greeted this hot-blooded stranger with nervous anticipation: could this be the Buddha for whom they'd been searching? He certainly had the shiny, bronze belly for it, they mused. Offering his hand in friendship, Linden was surprised to see the band ignore it. Instead, the digits of four grown men worked their way quickly inside his oversized NHL jersey to rub his stomach for luck, before handing him a mic and directing him menacingly toward the makeshift studio crudely erected in the farthest corner of the yard. "Get in."

Though Linden would be forever reticent about what took place in the shed that day, what is known is that the first seeds were showered upon a relationship that yielded the rich harvest of riffs and rhythms that later became the Strangle Fiction EP, a five-track, nineteen-minute sampler of grander things to come. Launched in April 2008 to a capacity crowd at the Arthouse Hotel, Melbourne, House of Thumbs was on its way and gigs flowed like manna from the heavens.

Harnessing the band's newfound popularity like a rogue stallion, House of Thumbs galloped across Victoria for a series of rural dates. Bendigo fell first, then Porpunkah – the town's only cop last seen disappearing beneath a tsunami of teenage angst while calling for backup. There was blood spilt in Geelong but nothing could compare to the devastation wreaked by the band in Albury on the eve of Black Saturday.

Missing the ferocity of the February fires by mere minutes, the lads cashed in their leave and returned once more to the studio for their biggest challenge to date, yet no one was quite prepared for the swirling, behemoth that was the group's first full-length album, Crossing the Rubicon. Working only during ad breaks, it took the band around three months to track the performances of the eleven songs, and another month to find the right mixer for the job

After trialling a team of Melbourne's most prominent mixers and masterers, Ren Reich (Reich Studios) got the job because he most closely shared the band's special brand of sonic sickness – though really, the deciding vote was cast because his Altona studio was the most closely positioned to a chicken shop. With the world watching, Reich delivered; drawing on his extensive archive of ancient Soviet ProTools plug-ins to pull a tone that would be talked about for years to come. His work done, Ren then mounted his custom hog and rode into the sunset, muttering about Harry Connick Jr., rainbow sheep, and the Hey Hey, It's Saturday debacle as he went.

"Right," said Linden, once Ren has disappeared from view, "Let me know when you wanna launch this thing. I'm off to the gym."

And he was too, because the whole Buddha thing was wearing kinda thin.

To be continued...