Style: Extreme hardcore punk
Primary Emotions/Themes: Like being subjected to a thunderstorm where all the rain drops are made of razor blades
Thoughts: I picked this up as a blind buy from Tower Records. I had never heard of Converge before, it was in the metal section and the cover looked cool. Oh boy was I not ready for this.
I put it on and First Light graced my ears. I thought (and still think) it was a beautiful intro. The delayed guitars brought out a beauty that I hadn't really heard the electric guitar make before this. It had a sense of bitter sweet nostalgia to it. It remains one of my favorite introductions to an album.
Last Light was a different story. The instant Jacob screamed "I need you" I knew this was going to be a rough ride. I was with one of my high school friends at the time and we both looked at each other like "what the hell is this?"
We made it through the album, but outside of a few select tracks we didn't really comprehend what was going on. It sat on my shelf for a long time before I came back to it after that.
I finally did and much like Jane Doe, it took me a long time to fully get into this album. I new that there was something there that was worth my time, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what I liked. It wasn't until I started seeing the patterns and organization in all the chaos that the album started to click.
Once it clicked, oh man did it click. Instead of First Light sounding like some idiot screaming over random riffs, it was a pained wail asking for help from someone... anyone. Instead of Hope Street sounding like a garbled mess of vocals and noise the riffs shred my ears and I loved it.
Jacobs vocals in particular was something that took me quite some time to get into. I had listened to death and black metal in the past, but his vocals put all of that to shame. This was unlike anything I had heard before, and really wouldn't again until I had acclimated to Anaal Nathrakh as well.
This album was instrumental in my appreciation for extreme music. Not just extreme metal, but extreme music in general. After I was accustomed to this the flood gates opened. Diamanda Galas, John Zorn, Merzbow... all of it was worth a shot now. It all began because I picked up a random album that looked cool at Tower Records.
Written June 30th 2024
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