Well my package finally arrived today bringing forth 6 brand new (to me) CDs. In the coming days will likely be some type of gauntlet of album reviews whenever I feel like actually getting to them. Within my package of new music were a few oldies that I won't bother reviewing. I needed to fill out my death metal catalog so I picked up some of the classics like Death's Individual Thought Patterns, Repulsion's Horrified, and a few others. They're classics, what's there to review? But the first album that I will be reviewing is Converge's Axe to Fall. I was pretty excited to get this CD because of all the rave reviews that it got. Hell, Decibel Magazine gave it a perfect 10/10. But then again, they are known for having a massive boner for Converge. I read through the reviews and of course, on paper every song sounds like it's gonna tear my asshole open. But I didn't go to their myspace page, or check them out on Youtube to try and get a sneak peek of what the songs all sounded like. I wanted to save that for the CD. I don't know if that was a good idea or not because I think I had really high expectations for the album. I currently own zero other Converge albums, and have only occasionally heard any of their songs. This was going to be a completely new experience for me.
For those of you that don't know, Converge is a foursome of fierce fret-fuckin force from Massachusetts. They play a brand of hardcore not unlike Torche, or Coalesce. Their album Jane Doe is often credited as being one of the break through hardcore albums of the decade whose art work has even inspired hundreds of bands. Needless to say they have quite the reputation, and every album they release has quite a bar to hurdle.
Axe to Fall features a regular cornucopia of who's-who in the metal business. The amount of people that collaborated on this album is absurd. Look at this list taken from wikipedia:
* Sean Martin (ex-Hatebreed, Cage) – lead guitar, backing vocals on "Reap What You Sow"
* George Hirsch (Blacklisted) – backing vocals on "Axe to Fall"
* Steve Brodsky (Cave In) – lead guitar on "Effigy"
* Adam McGrath (Cave In) – guitars on "Effigy"
* John-Robert Connors (Cave In, Doomriders) – drums on "Effigy" and "Wretched World"
* Ulf Cederlund (Disfear, ex-Entombed) – lead guitar, backing vocals on "Wishing Well"
* Tim "Trivikrama Dasa" Cohen (108) – lead guitar on "Damages"
* John Pettibone (Undertow, Himsa) – backing vocals on "Cutter"
* Steve Von Till (Neurosis) – lead vocals on "Cruel Bloom"
* Aimee Argote (Des Ark) – backing vocals on "Cruel Bloom"
* "The Rodeo" – backing vocals on "Cruel Bloom"
* Chris Taylor (Pygmy Lush, ex-Pg. 99) – backing vocals on "Cruel Bloom"
* Mookie Singerman (Genghis Tron) – lead vocals, keyboard on "Wretched World"
* Hamilton Jordan (Genghis Tron) – guitars on "Wretched World"
* Michael Sochynsky (Genghis Tron) – keyboard on "Wretched World"
* Brad Fickeisen (The Red Chord) – drums on "Wretched World"
It's amazing that you could still call it a Converge album. And again, without any listens to their back catalog it's hard for me to say whether or not the guest appearances really changed the music or not, but as for my first couple of listens to the CD I'd have to say that the idea that was to be obtained with each song is not lost on the listener because of the multitude of other artist contributions.
The first song on the album is Dark Horse. And it really sets the tone. The riff that starts at the :14 second mark is bad ass enough to give fans of Between the Buried and Me a boner. And as complex as it is, it's not like one of those "Dillinger" riffs that are super spastic. It's still hardcore. Very nice production on this album. The guitar tone isn't annoying, the vocals are buried enough in the muck that they don't take away from the music, and the bass line really cuts through. This song is sure to be a fan favorite during the shows because it barely let's down; which means mosh-galore.
Dark Horse barely breaks before the beat is going on the hi-hit for the next song: Reap What You Sow. By the sound of it you'd think Mastodon's Brent Hinds was playing on it. I don't think I have to keep re-stating that the songs are very fast paced. In fact from here on out just imagine each track is face rippingly fast, until noted otherwise. The vocals are very grind-core like. Very indecipherable. You'll be grabbing your linear notes once this track hits for sure. I like how this track moves from idea to idea, and then throws in an old-school solo for good measure.
Again, with no break, it's onto the next track: Axe to Fall. Very tricky guitar work on this one. But you wouldn't listen to this and think it's just some guy noodling. Guitarist Kurt Ballou is shredding. Pretty short track, but I think it was necessary. The linear notes show that most songs have limited lyrics, and the sole verse is likely to be repeated. You can't understand Jacob Bannon anyway, so that's actually not as annoying as I thought it would be.
And what do you know? The next track, Effigy, starts up right away. It's a bit exhaustive at this point. Some CD's can do it, Pig Destroyer's Terrifyer for example, but these tracks are borderline too long for it to feel like a good move. If your song repeats itself (eg verse chorus verse), and you play a style of music where most of your songs are inevitably going to sound alike, don't let every song on the album run directly into the next one. Unless the unrelenting madness is what they were aiming for. In which case they nailed it. Some really cool guitar sounds in this song. The guitar kinda takes a back seat at certain parts through-out the song for something that can only be described as "wham-doodlin'".
Finally, a break between songs, and a noticeably different tempo. And I don't mean that as "Finally, I've been waiting for that" as much as I mean it as "Oh, one finally happened. They clearly know what they're doing". Worms Will Feed takes you down to where the worms do feed: in the muck. This song is Slu-hu-hu-dgy! And oddly enough when I first heard it I figured this was one of the songs that had collaboration on it. And oddly enough: No. It's their own experimentation on their own brand of hardcore. It's a very interesting song. I think it would have even found a home on Coalesce's OX album, cause of the almost western feel to it. Actually that's pretty cool about this song. It's sludgy, so you think southern like Louisiana, but there's a twang to the guitars which puts you somewhere else in the Southwest. Then you get the hardcore part of it that makes you think California. Like the desert area in California where there are those Joshua trees. That's where this song takes place. Which is literally on the other side of the coast from Massachusetts.
Wishing Well backs up Worms Will Feed. And it does it well. The tempo is just slightly quicker, as if they're getting ready to build you back up to the original rip your face off quickness. This song has a nice chugging beat to it, without being too cheesy. And, like all songs with chugging beats it has gang vocals. With Ulf Cederlund of Disfear playing the lead guitar in this song, and because of it's Rock and Roll qualities, this song mind as well be a Disfear song featuring Jacob on vocals.
Damages. What? Still not back to face ripping speed. Clearly the guys got something up their sleeve. Maybe it's the perpetual palm muted guitars, or the fact that drummer Ben Koller is perpetually doing a drum role- but I'm not too big on this song. The different vocals towards the crawling end are a welcome change. And I like the spasm of a guitar solo that's barely a guitar solo. Essentially I like the second half of the song more than the beginning and it's staccato pattern. If the first few tracks were challenging to get through because of their punishing tempo, than these last 3 tracks have been a much needed break. But the brevity of the next song foreshadows the arrival of face-ripping speed.
Losing battle is the next rack. And sure enough, the hardcore is back. So is the fading into the next track. The guitars are much more straight-forward on this track, relying on feed back to fill voids between Bannon's singing, and the typical string bending exclamations one would expect to hear on a hardcore album (older Everytime I Die comes to mind).
Dead Beat is another track that I thought for sure would have contributing artist on it. Yet again I was proven wrong while fingering through the linear notes. This is another track with less-impressive-than-previous-tracks guitar work. Ballou is still shredding, but if you're gonna start an album with the riff found on Dark Horse, then I'm gonna have to compare each song's guitar work to that. Sounds like there were a few different guitar tracks layered together on this one. Like you can barely make out an acoustic guitar in the background during the intro, and the repeating parts of that idea.
Cutter is up next, and oh what a riff in the beginning. Hello Slayer! Alas, it's short live before switching back to spastic hardcore mode. Ballou's guitar seems like it's almost doing the back up vocals for Bannon through-out the verses. Probably one of the least creative parts of the album in my opinion. For some reason I've never really been a fan of the singer using the main riff as a vocal pattern, but it shows up a lot in hardcore. I kinda wished they did more with that sweet sounding guitar tone they had in the beginning and end of the song.
The next track, that actually wasn't faded into, is Slave Driver. I think if it wasn't for the change in vocals in the middle of the song, Bannon's growl would kind of get stale. This song is very punk. More so than anything else on the album. Yet it still manages to go back to this almost industrial sounding prog-metal rhythm. Not like Meshuggah, instead it's more like...Fear Factory? Weird, but cool: Punk and Fear Factory.
The next tracks Cruel Bloom and Wretched World are so disjointed from the rest of the album that they don't even seem like Converge songs. They literally don't feel "in place" on the album. Not odd at all is the fact that these are the two songs with the most collaboration on them. Hell, the whole Genghis Tron group shows up for Wretched World. Steve Von Till of Neurosis sings on Cruel Bloom, and the song mind as well be his. There's also some female vocals that show up in the chorus. And I think that's an xylophone. I literally don't think Bannon is featured on this song at all. So I doubt this one will ever show up in concert. It's probably just as well as this song would totally kill the show. I mean it's a good song. It's very interesting. But it honestly sounds more like Giant Squid with Steve Von Till, than it does any hardcore band, let alone the band we heard in the previous tracks. It's pretty cool to have such a different track on the album, but again, it's very disjointed. Wretched World on the other hand, though also pretty far removed from the rest of the songs on Axe to Fall, has it's own unique quality to it. In my opinion they should have cut out Cruel Bloom and just went straight to this track. Or put Cruel Bloom somewhere else in the album. It's just too weird ending the CD with two songs where I don't even know if any members of Converge are even playing along. As Genghis Tron, the entire Genghis Tron, plays on Wretched World it surely enough sounds like Genghis Tron. The drummer from Red Chord and Cave in play on the song too, but I couldn't tell you where. It mind as well be Genghis Tron's drum machine. The song is good, don't get me wrong. I actually really like it, but that's cause I already really like Genghis Tron. I actually think they should have taken the track space that Cruel Bloom took up and made Wretched World that much longer as this song could easily span 10 minutes without overstaying it's welcome. And then maybe, you know, some of the Converge guys could have shown up to play on it.
Overall I give the music on this album a 7/10. It had it's moments of greatness and it's almost like they overshadowed the moments of less awesomeness and made them into moments of mediocrity. The riff on Dark Horse for example, totally bad ass. But when you get down to tracks like Slave Driver the little hardcore bending the string noise isn't going to cut it. The drumming was tight, the bass was there, but neither were amazing. I actually think the main issue with the band is Bannon's lack of range. I understand fully the style of music they are playing, but hell even grindcore bands switch it up a little. Just look at JR Hayes of Pig Destroyer or Kevin Sharp of Brutal Truth. I think the collaboration is a big reason this album got such great reviews. It helped break up some of the monotony of Bannon's growl. I haven't listened to Converge enough to know how the contributing guitarists changed the sound of the music, but Ballou is seemingly a beast on guitar when he wants to be. He showed a great deal of dexterity and open-mindedness to dabble in other genres through-out the album. He is truly the bands greatest asset.
I'd give the album artwork a 6/10. It wasn't anything crazy cool, or even super inventive, but it fits the music. After seeing some of their other albums artwork it's clear that one guy (Ballou) has consistently done them all. Kinda like when you look at Mastodon's art work.
Overall that gives Axe to Fall a 13/20. Unfortunately they couldn't get a perfect score from me, but 13/20 is still really good. One thing that is clear with this album is that it will be a grower for me. Again, I haven't really listened to anything that Converge has put out in the past, so it's hard to really grade this album based on their other work. This was a new experience for me and I'm glad that I got the album. I'm sure I'll be going back to it a lot, and will undoubtedly hear new and cool things that I didn't catch before. Up next for my reviews I still have:
Keep of Kalessin- Armada
Cobalt- Gin
Marduk- Wormwood
Clutch- Strange Cousins from the West
OM- God is Good
And I think that's it. Thankfully I'm not the most prolific writer ever, so I'm sure there will be space in between those albums, if I even get to all of them.
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