This is PART 2 in a 4 part series. If you'd like to start from the beginning, click here.
This section will cover Converge's ALBUMS from 1994's Halo in a Haystack up to 2001's Jane Doe. The remaining albums are covered in the next part.
Halo in a Haystack – 1994
Their debut – it’s, uh, not their best work, let’s say. But it’s also not bad at all. It’s super raw and primitive, and you can definitely hear the initial roots that’ll soon blossom into Converge’s core sound - particularly with Jacob’s voice and Kurt’s weird little guitar bits - but it’s a release that more so displays Converge’s potential rather than actually achieving it. There are a lot of great ideas and moments for sure, but as an overall record it’s sometimes lacking in energy and isn’t super captivating imo. It’s still enjoyable though, it’s a cool hardcore record to blast in the background when doing other stuff. I’d love for Converge to re-record some of the tracks on here though because with a bit of work they could become colossal.
This record isn’t much of an essential listen in the Converge canon, so don’t feel you have to rush to listen to it. Check out this album if you want some decent, lo-fi hardcore, or you wanna hear some primeval Converge. It’s out of print (they only did one run of 1000 copies) and so difficult to get hold of, but someone has graciously put the full thing on YouTube. Every track on it apart from Exhale also ended up on later compilation records anyway.
Summary – A sorta quirky hardcore record with some good moments.
Favourite tracks – Shallow Breathing, Two Day Romance, Becoming a Stranger, Divinity, Down
Petitioning The Empty Sky - 1996
(Author/Idiot’s Note: Back when I was first getting into Converge, this record initially confused me, because I was never sure if it was actually an album or not – as a teenage kid, I was reading that it was an EP, but also a compilation album, and also a normal LP too. What the heck going on? Well don’t mind all that, because it turns out I’m just a fucking idiot. The truth, as I very-soon-later worked out, is much less exciting. It was initially released in early 1996 as a four track 7”/EP. It was later re-released that same year, but now with four extra tracks added, thus making it an LP (it was also released on CD this time round). It was re-released and reissued multiple times in later years with more tracks added, but that second release/original CD release is considered the ‘true’ version of this album from my understanding. It’s also the version I’m gonna be talking about below. Oh, and apparently the band views it as a compilation album because the tracks on there were recorded at different times, but whatever…)
Right, enough about my stupidity, you’re here to know how this album sounds.
Well in short – it’s fucking great. It’s actually one of my favourite Converge records, purely cos of how much ass it kicks. This is the moment when they first properly blended in metallic elements; combined with a better executed hardcore style, Converge here really find their footing and put out eight absolutely crushing tracks. Shit loads of energy, riffs for days and Jacob’s voice becomes identifiable as his legendary screech here. Instrumentally, it lurches from both super punky (Albatross, Buried But Breathing) to super metal, practically sounding like Slayer (Forsaken or The Saddest Day, about 2.5 mins in). It’s a true all killer no filler record; the band sound like they have confidence for the first time and every song sounds unique and has its respective merits. Previously-mentioned track The Saddest Day is Converge’s first classic tune and is an essential listen.
Converge here aren’t yet at the level where they’re recording face-meltingly intense sonic tornados that’ll decimate your ears – as such, I reckon it’s an album that’s almost ‘accessible’ (by Converge standards). Well, at least compared to Converge’s other early work. This album is of course still hard as nails - so it’ll be difficult fresh territory for many – but its simplicity and succinctness mean that it’s potentially a good record for new listeners to get a taster of the band’s most aggressive sounds, without risking biting off more than they can chew. Of course, I wouldn’t advise starting here, but don’t shy away from it either. Definitely check this record out, imo it’s one that every fan of the genre should at least listen to, if not own a copy of.
Another note: It’s also definitely worth checking out the later reissues because they do add a bunch of cool tracks including some live stuff. Gotta mention the live version of Homesong, where they pause the song just before the big final build-up, so one of the guitarists can replace a broken string. Jacob meanwhile says (rather hilariously): “Hey look I’m bleeding. I hit myself in the head with the mic stand and I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding like a sieve. Just so you know… I’m okay. It’ll make us look punk.” Also they snuck in a cheeky hidden track, covering Twisted Sister’s Burn In Hell, which is actually great fun lol. This is pretty unknown, it isn’t even mentioned on Wikipedia, and it’s not on any streaming service aside from someone who managed to get it onto YouTube – link here.
Summary – Welcome to Riff fuckin’ City. There are clear punk-y bits and clear metal bits – all of which are rad - but they also have sections where they blend them together and sound fucking awesome. The first signs of Converge becoming/helping invent metalcore.
Favourite tracks – The Saddest Day, Forsaken, Albatross, Shingles, Farewell Note To This City, Color Me Blood Red – [Yes, I am aware I just listed ¾ of the entire record. It’s just that good. Go listen to it.]
When Forever Comes Crashing - 1998
If Petitioning The Empty Sky can be viewed as Converge’s metallic hardcore coming over the horizon, then When Forever Comes Crashing is the sound of it catching up to you and mauling you to death. This record is a more focused and refined expression of the sound they first pioneered on Petitioning The Empty Sky. The riffs are still here in spades, as well as the intensity - and even more notably, the experimentation - being increased. ‘The punk bits’ and ‘the metal bits’ are much less distinguishable; instead they’re consistently blended together throughout the album to make it a more abrasive listen overall. The thunderous opening salvo of My Unsaid Everything and The High Cost of Playing God demonstrate this more refined style well, and the experimentation later on also adds onto this – forming a chaotic hardcore sound that verges on mathcore in places. For example, the layering and dissonance towards the end of In Harms Way or the intro to Year of the Swine. Sludge-y, doomy hardcore, a style that Converge will soon explore in great depth with many later records, makes its first strong appearance on The Lowest Common Denominator; a track which also mixes in dissonance, feedback, noise and a powerful loud/quiet dynamic to overall form a rather unnerving song. Also wanna mention the title track, which is an energetic and dynamic track that opens with a weird as hell riff and soon progresses and develops over time, leading to a breakdown that I’m sure many on this sub could enjoy. It’s followed by Ten Cents – oh? and whaaatt’s this? A soft ballad? In my Converge album? Well, it’s a nice break I suppose, even if Jacob’s singing isn’t the most suave.
Anyway, you get the point. It’s a nicely varied album and it’s the first time Converge start flexing a wider variety of strengths and showing off how many strings they potentially have to their bow. Jacob’s vocals also become much more rhythmic and textural on this album; while this was always an aspect of his vocals, they really seem to be in greater force here, with some parts being properly indecipherable. The experimentation and sonic diversity both keep the album interesting throughout, as well as signalling where the band were soon to head. However, I will add that the rawness doesn’t make this album a good starting point for new listeners.
Oh and also, here’s a challenge: Try not to headbang when everything kicks in at 2:24 during Letterbomb.
Summary – Converge begin to better realise and refine their metallic hardcore sound, with a healthy spoonful of experimentation on top. This introduction of some greater variety (as well as an increase in overall intensity) create a hectic ride of a record, containing some of their most underrated ragers.
Favourite tracks – My Unsaid Everything, The High Cost of Playing God, Conduit, When Forever Comes Crashing, Year of the Swine, Love As Arson
Jane Doe - 2001
“To them, we're just this fucking chaotic noise that makes no sense, which has no sort of merit or validity. But then to somebody else who has the correct influences and has listened to enough music that they're looking for something more, they might get our band and understand our band."
This is it. This is the big daddy. This is where the real shit starts. Terrorizer’s AOTY in 2001. Noisecreep’s ‘Best Album of the 2000s’. Both Decibel and Sputnikmusic named it the best album of the decade. And Loudwire called it the greatest metalcore album of all time. You’ve almost certainly heard of this album - you might have even tried to listen to it – and it is, by any and all regards, a classic. It was the record I started with – frequently cited as their masterpiece, I remember thinking it’d be a good place to start – but it was by far the longest one for me to work out, ‘get’ it and enjoy. Don’t make the same mistake I made, newbies – do not start with this album. It’s a fuckin brilliant record of course, but do not start with it.
So if Jane Doe is such a damn difficult record to listen to, why is it so well regarded? Well for starters, despite being a 16-year-old (Edit: and soon to be 17-year-old, as of writing) album, it’s still insanely heavy. It still kicks ass all these years later, and even though there are many - including myself - who are fully comfortable with it, it still occasionally rocks you with just how rabid and intense it is. One of the few albums I can think of that still has the same effect is The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity, or perhaps some of Napalm Death’s early releases. As one retrospective reviewer wrote:
“It’s clear that they don’t want you to get too comfortable. It’s clear that much like the situation described in the lyrics, moods can and will change without warning. There’s no constant, no real refuge.”
I’m trying not to write a huge thesis here, but it’s important to try and convey how earthshattering this album was when it dropped. Although it’s not like this record catapulted Converge to the top of the metal mainstream or anything like that - but within the circles it did mix in, it was monumental. Nate Newton, bassist of Converge, said in interview that he remembers ‘all of us wanting to write a hardcore record the kids were going to hate.’ Jane Doe might not have received all of that hate (although it certainly got some), but it sounded like nothing else at the time, and was particularly impactful and standout in a world dominated by nu-metal and pop-punk. Anyway, enough with that, history lesson over. Let’s break this album down a bit so you can understand what you’re tackling here.
Firstly – remember what I said at the beginning about Jacob Bannon’s unintelligible lyrics? Well Jane Doe steps it up a notch, in that the lyrics on the recorded tracks are different from the linear notes. Not in that one to two words are different – no, instead we’re talking entirely different structures and sets of lyrics. Probably the most well-known example of this is with opening track Concubine, where the booklet has a whole series of beautiful, poetic lyrics (Google them, or go buy a physical copy!). However, if you actually listen to the song, you’ll hear that Bannon is just repeatedly screeching something along the lines of “Just stay gold” over and over, as well as “I’ll stay forever… gold” and “Dear, I’ll stay gold… forever” towards the end. I might be wrong in the interpretation there, but that’s almost part of the allure. The album chronicles the end of a romantic relationship and the ‘emotional fallout’ of it all. The lyrics in the booklet can be seen as the back story, the lyrical context or the expanded thoughts that Bannon couldn’t bring himself to sing - and the actual words screamed during the recorded take are just what he was feeling at the time. It’s almost an art form in itself. I won’t go too deep on it any further, but there are plenty of interesting takes and discussions on it online if you’re intrigued (that Vice/Noisey article is a good start – give it a read by now if you haven’t already). So yeah, that’s one of the reasons why Jane Doe is a special and unique album – not just in Converge’s discography, but in the entire world of heavy music.
Secondly – this album is where Converge seem to finally nail the sound they’d be going for on the two records prior. When Forever Comes Crashing showed the band beginning to try and expand their sound by experimenting with different styles and dynamics, but Jane Doe is where they seemed to get it all to fall into place. It has the feel and soul of a raw punk record, while crucially still being refined enough for everything in the mix to be discernible, and for the emotional impact to not get lost. Going back to the previously mentioned opening track Concubine; it manages to cram an incredible amount of song progression into its 1:19 runtime – dynamics that previous releases fail to capture as effectively. Concubine is also arguably the quintessential Converge song – a setlist mainstay, possibly only rivalled by later-era album openers Last Light and Dark Horse. It dances around hectic and intense riffs and rhythms, culminating in an immense breakdown riff at the end, and is all round just genuinely blistering. You’re given barely 2 seconds to breathe before massive follow-up track Fault and Fracture, which ducks and dives its way through a maelstrom of riffs and drum work, with Bannon’s despairing vocals perfectly following Ballou’s scrambled guitar work. Distance and Meaning is the first sign of greater clarity, with the vocals occasionally being fairly understandable and clean, all with more controlled, high register guitar riffing for most of the time. Hell To Pay turns things down even more, slowing the pace and lowering the walls of distortion and intensity to produce Converge’s first sludge metal-paced song up to this point that (imo) is successfully engaging and well written.
But the pace returns with the next three tracks: Homewrecker, The Broken Vow and Bitter And Then Some. All three are well organised chaos, with my personal favourite of the three being The Broken Vow, which also features some drifting clean vocals and some beefy chants over a powerful (and sometimes emotive) instrumental. Bitter And Then Some comes close though, with a couple of jumpy riffs, some hard-as-dicks punk drumming and a kick-arse scream from Bannon about halfway through. Heaven In Her Arms then follows this trifecta of carnage, and blows all of them away as one of the most consistently awesome songs on the entire album. Speedy, tight riffing from Ballou and a menacing bassline from Nate Newton soon lead to this massive, meaty riff in the second half of the song - which is then turned into a sludgey breakdown. It’s a fluid and dynamic track, and a contender for having the best riffs (and for being my personal favourite) on Jane Doe.
Phoenix in Flight is a sonic whirlpool that builds and develops over time, with buzzing, fuzzy guitars gradually fighting their own feedback as clean vocals wash over the groaning instrumental work. Meanwhile Thaw is an angular, quirky, mid-tempo track with particularly throat shredding vocals from Bannon. It’s one track especially that doesn’t let you get too comfortable – however it manages to make its way to a big repeating riff crescendo towards the end, as Bannon lets out some of his last screams of anguish. The track rings out into Jane Doe, the eponymous closing track on the album…
An 11-and-a-half-minute epic, the title track was one of the longest Converge songs for me to fully understand – it’s winding and repetitive, and at a slow tempo, and the emotion of it is difficult to latch onto if you aren’t in the right state of mind. It’s raw as fuck, persisting with the same riffs and leads over and over as Bannon screams of his desolations, but the melodies still shine through regardless. Just over 7 minutes in, the song shifts to a more melodic and vulnerable (and arguably more emotional) tone, in contrast to the more despairing one prior. Initially starting with just Kurt’s emotive guitar melody, simple and powerful drum work are gradually introduced, and the two are pulled together by Newton’s crucial bass line, bringing the last four minutes of the track towards a shattering, cathartic conclusion. The song feels like it’s building towards an apparent crescendo, with the repeating progression and guitar melody having a vital impact again, taking over after Bannon howls his final farewells of “Run…”. Instead of an epic climax however, the song gradually (and perhaps symbolically) fades out – after one of the most emotionally draining segments on the record, the journey is over.
Jane Doe is a landmark album in music history. The record came from genuine feelings and experiences of pain, frustration, desperation and despair, rather than simply being another fast and shouty record to mosh to. And so emotionally, it’s feral, ferocious, and fucking unstoppable. And it’s not just in the lyrics or the vocals; it’s in the music. Jane Doe was one of those rare moments in history where a band took a musical form that’s often viewed as something adolescent at best (metal infused hardcore punk in this case) and turn it into something grown up and developed. It’s still a remarkably fresh and genuinely stirring listen - even years later - in a genre which is often seen as transitory.
(Credit to Jamie Grimes, whose article I based this last paragraph on.)
Summary – Converge manage to get all the pieces to fall in all the right places, producing their first truly expansive album and one that’s emotionally stirring in many different ways. Chronicling the end of a romantic relationship and the ‘emotional fallout’ of it all, it’s a powerful and compelling record that’s still stunning even today, and remains a resolute classic of the genre.
Favourite tracks – Concubine, Fault and Fracture, The Broken Vow, Bitter And Then Some, Heaven In Her Arms, Thaw, Jane Doe (especially the last 4 minutes lol)
Note: I originally wanted to put a lot more content in this section on Jane Doe – particularly on the writing and production of the record - just because of how important and special it is. I’m gonna spare you any more walls of gushing text for now, but I do recommend checking out this great discussion on heavy music and the making of Jane Doe with Matthew Ellard (engineer/producer of the album) and guitarist Kurt Ballou at the Berkeley College of Music in 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNZQfdsbaq8
FOR PART 3, CLICK HERE
Links to other parts:
Part 1 - Intro, TL;DR
Part 3 - Albums: You Fail Me - The Dusk In Us
Part 4 - Non-Album Releases
Submitted September 04, 2018 at 06:48PM by OscarRainy https://ift.tt/2wHc68f
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