Converge

I remember in 94, we drove up to Boston and played with a band that was kind of unheard of.

And they were called Converge.

Oh,

nice.

You know, and Dark Side, Dark Side NYC played that show and Converge.

And I remember playing with all these bands back then.

You know, I remember once we were on tour, Strong Attention was on tour in 97 and we played at Victory Records in Chicago.

It pales in comparison to like the good metal core of the day of the day.

And don't even get me started on a band like Converge.

Are you joking me right now? The BT band? You don't hold a fucking candle to this shit.

So my favorite is They're Only Chasing Safety.

More so than the Early Avenged, more so than anything.

I think that first Atreyu record is... is kind of the beginning of what is best known as metalcore like modern metalcore

I think I don't listen to like a whole lot of it but like the landmark albums like Converge's Jane Doe like that is considered like top three but like a but like but this is never really considered like a top three and i don't think that's fair i don't think that's right because i do think that's great and i think that's what you should want to be right you have guitarists in your band and that's what you want to sound like and on the album of the week when we get to it there's a couple parts like oh look at that that's like a little medical roof that you just did there for two seconds and then never again for the whole record

They do that on every record.

Let's just put it that way.

Possibly Converge, then? Converge,

yes.

Okay.

Sometimes those little lyrics are really hard to make out.

Yeah, yeah.

It is Converge, and it's the song Jane Doe.

Very, like... heavy duty lyrics like uh very personal like lyrics from converge so you you do see a little bit of a shift here away from like the oh we're gonna take it to the streets it's definitely it gets more in inter uh you know personal it gets a little bit more um vulnerable here

A little hardcore band, a little venue near me.

And I was, at that particular time, really, really into bands like Converge and Drowning Man and Cave In and the Dillinger Escape Plan.

And I was just gobbling up any kind of American, metallic, hardcore, Poison the Well music.

vision disorder all that kind of stuff i absolutely loved it and i went up to the guy who was doing a distro at the back of the venue and i said to him i really like all of these metallic hardcore bands what have you got for me that you think i will like i'm going to buy something anything and he pulled out the mark of the judas by darkest hour which is their 2000 debut album and said this is brilliant this is like hardcore punk kids playing at the gates riffs And I was like, sold, I'm having that.

yeah it's so good um right your next pick is it's funny actually because what you just said is kind of segued quite nicely about being a kind of hardcore band playing metal or a um you know to metal fans and hardcore fans because your next pick is slaughter the soul the aforementioned slaughter the soul by at the gates uh their fourth album um their last time for nearly two decades and uh it came out on the 14th of november 1995 and So probably around 2001, I reckon, I went to see the Leeds hardcore band Imbalance and Dead Inside as well, the Winchester Railway right near me when I was a kid, right? And there was a distro there and the guy said, I was talking to the guy who was running this distro and And I said, I want like a hardcore band.

I want like a heavy, heavy hardcore.

And I was like, I'm into sort of Botch and Converge and Drowning Man and Dillinger and those sort of bands.

And he went, you've got to get this band, right? This band, they're punk kids playing at the gate riffs.

And my buddy who used to be in that band knows it, and I love him to death.

But Because of just like the politics and the way things were in 2004, that's the band that sold the most tickets and is opening for Between the Buried and Me, Cave-In, and Converge and the top room for like 500 people.

And guess what? It rules.

Like, obviously.

Nice.

That's cool.

I mean, I just saw Poison the Well because they came back with Converge and Balmora here, I don't know, a few months ago.

So that was a really good show as well.

...

Converge's Love Is Not Enough.

So I guess both in the math realm.

Yeah, mathcore, yeah.

Yeah.

Anyways, so that's what we have.

[laughs] I'm really annoying, but I also haven't heard Converge's Love Is Not, Love Is Not Enough, so.

I also have not heard Converge.

So while I rest my weary bones, let's take a journey way back to episode 13.

Jacob Bannon from one of my all-time favorite bands, Converge, joined me to talk about music and art as therapy.

Welcome to Screen Therapy.

I'm your host, Jason Schurz.

But in my reality, emotional bloodletting means the creative expression of a wide range of feelings.

The light in the dark, joy and anger, sadness, rage.

I'm a longtime fan of Boston punk metal band Converge, and the lyrics and art of their singer, Jacob Bannon.

I've used Converge's chaotic music to soothe my tired brain and expel restless energy that was unhealthy for me to keep in.

Which is exactly the mission for our deep dive today.

We've got a massive stack of sources here detailing the 30-year history of the band Converge.

[laughs]

A huge stack.

Right.

Like most bands were just mixing two chemicals to see if they'd explode.

But Converge was trying to forge a completely new indestructible alloy out of everything in the room.

That's a great analogy.