Monday, December 11, 2023

Entry 628 - Converge - The Poacher Diaries

Style: Hardcore punk, metalcore

Primary Emotions/Themes: Pain, relationships, personal struggles

Thoughts: This album is like a time capsule. This is Converge before they were Converge.  You see small instances of what they would become, but this still is instantly definable as metalcore. 

All of the genre tropes are here. Chaotic riffs, the breakdowns, the songs building. It's 90's metalcore, and it's great. It's just not converge.

Jacob's voice is still mostly understandable, and he does not sound nearly as ferocious as he does on later albums. The drums are chaotic but not nearly as much as they would be a few years later. The guitars show more typical progressions and riff construction than the cacophony that would be utilized later on. Everything is tinges of Converge, but the flower has yet to bloom into the beautiful plague that the band would become.

Converge would become so much more than they have on display here. This is cool, but it's not going to be something that I spin on a regular basis. It's like that family relic or tome that everyone loves to have on the shelf but never takes out. An artifact of a past time period that is important to know, but not something that needs to be revisited often.

Written December 5th 2023

No comments:

Post a Comment

Entry - 1151 - Nevermore - The Politics of Ecstasy

Style: Post-thrash, groove, American power metal Primary Emotions/Themes: A venomous critique of the United States justice system, both lyri...