Converge

w/ Mastodon and Priestess

Wednesday, January 31@ 40 Watt Club

originally published January 24, 2007

Converge

Rarely does a band ever describe its own music accurately. Generally speaking, bands employ weasel-like techniques to avoid pigeonholing themselves, or to allow genre hopping. Brutally powerful outfit Converge, however, is the rare example that gets it totally right. The music Converge plays (which blends the worlds of thrash and hardcore into something more powerful than either, rather than, as is often the case, a weakened version of each) is self- described as simply “aggressive music.” That description could just as easily describe something as banal as gangsta rap, but to metal and hardcore fans, underground aficionados and extreme-music lovers, the simplicity is clear: Converge is less interested in your labels than it is in its own music.

Although the 16-year-old band has undergone seven lineup changes, the most recent was six years ago, and the band is as solid as can be. While its star continues to rise in the metal world, Converge pointedly namechecks the essential hardcore band of the late 1980s and early 1990s - Born Against - as a core influence. In many ways, what Converge has done over the course of its six albums can be traced directly back to what Born Against was doing - while not explicitly seeking to alienate anyone, the band pulled no punches and spared no sacred cows, musically or topically. If anything, it's this characteristic that endeared the doomed Born Against to audiences and may be, similarly, an aspect of what makes Converge so admired.

Converge's newest album No Heroes is the band's second for the mammoth Epitaph Records label. Although clearly Epitaph is a few financial feet above the band's previous labels (Equal Vision, Hydra Head, Relapse, etc.), the main effect of this association seems to be, simply, that Converge now finds itself covered and reviewed in nearly all music media. The music hasn't changed; it’s just that a whole lot more people know about the band. And that’s a good thing, right?

Gordon Lamb