Style: Metalcore, hardcore punk, noise, emo
Primary Emotions/Themes: Rage, chaos, confusion, love, relationships
Thoughts: The first five songs on this album are unlike anything I've ever heard before. Each one is about a minute long and each transitions directly from one into the next. Together they create one of the most intense starts to an album that I have in my collection.
Heartache begins with a relatively slow riff that could only be played by Converge. It's deep, it's barely contained, its noisy as all get out. After a few measures of this the before the band completely explodes with into pure chaos, start/stop riffing, and insane drumming to boot. The original riff comes back for one more round before we are off to Hellbound.
A skank beat that is almost as fast as many blast beats starts off Hellbound with the bass making up the main of the riff. The guitars feedback in before the main riff of the song screeches into existence. The band picks up the pace even faster as Jacob belts his lungs out. After two cycles of the feedback laden riff the band moves onto Sacrifice.
Track three is as crazy as the previous two tracks but provides its dissonance in a completely different manner. The opening riff, if you can even call it that, is two notes followed by a snare before devolving into a huge riff that kicks my ass every time. The notes that start come back and reset the song before the band creates a meaty end of the song with one final riff. Everything stops and we are now in Vengeance.
This next track is unlike anything to this point. Everything is everywhere. The guitars are screaming, the vocals are belting, the bass is thundering, and the drums are hitting all the skins at once. This all happens consecutively for 58 seconds with no breaks. Again, everything stops and we feel the Weight of the World on us.
The final track in this collection of songs is the seminal breakdown that has been needed through all the chaos of the last four minutes. While still feedback laden the band is more contained here than they were at any previous point and the listener finally gets a breath. That is, until the title track rears its head at the final moments of the breakdown.
Building up from feedback No Heroes comes blasting in with a rare energy. The riff rips my fucking face off. This is the same energy as Concubine from Jane Doe. The band has been building to this the entire time for the album and the payoff is immense. The track concludes the incredible introductory sequence to the album and leaves me with my jaw on the floor every time.
The rest of the album is excellent, but nothing matches the intensity of those first five (or six songs if you include the title track). The album concludes the incredible trilogy that started with Jane Doe in near perfect fashion. No other band is like Converge, not now and likely not ever.
Written December 5th 2023
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