MetalSucks

An initial impression of Axe to Fall, Converge’s latest bruiser, is that it’s a little too simplistic: the vast majority of the album find the band rocking more balls out than they have since their early days. Even “Worms Will Feed” and “Damages,” two slower tracks, feel more like uneasy breathing room than the expansive, emotional dalliances of You Fail Me’s “In Her Shadow” or No Heroes’ “Grim Rose/Black Heart.” Even despite Axe to Fall’s two further-out-than-ever-before closing songs, the majority of the album feels slight, missing a key element of what had made the band as exceptional as they are up until now. With No Heroes finding the band at once at their grindiest and most experimental, something about Axe to Fall feels empty.

Of course, initial impressions don’t do a Converge album justice; if the band are known for anything, it’s marrying the deceptively simple and the brilliantly complex. Despite its tendency to be more gruff than any modern Converge release, Axe to Fall features some of the band’s tightest, most interesting songwriting, as well as providing one of the most satisfying repeat listens of any Converge album. Compact but alarmingly dense, the band have never been this comfortable putting their heads down and charging at you, with a relentlessness that’s almost militaristic in its approach. More than just a bunch of throw-aways before its wildly expansive ending, Axe to Fall stands eye level with their genre-defining full length debut (Petitioning the Empty Sky) or their genre-shattering masterpiece (Jane Doe). Though foolish and cynical to think otherwise, the band are still as good as they’ve ever been, with no signs of coasting despite having been around exponentially longer than most of the hardcore bands they came up with.

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Axe to Fall, Converge’s once-again excellent new album, is yet another stylistic shift: the majority of it is devoted to the band playing harder and more technically than they have in their post-Jane Doe era, while the closing two songs finding them venturing further away from their comfort zone than they ever have before. But even though guitarist Kurt Ballou darts all over the fretboard more than usual, vocalist Jacob Bannon changes nothing about his performance, from the breathless rambling on opener “Dark Horse” to his trademark pterodactyl-like shriek over the course of the album. But this isn’t to say that he’s in a state of creative stasis while the rest of the band moves outwards: Bannon’s hellacious scream is just as much a part of Converge’s uniqueness as is Ballou’s nimble riffing. Bannon’s work on Axe to Fall is as savage as it’s ever been, and once again adds weight and disturbing depth to the album’s metallic hardcore-fueled chaos.

Jacob Bannon’s place in metal, hardcore, and—for better or worse—metalcore is massive, with his trademark vocals incalculably influential and lyrics favoring the abstract over the melodramatic. Even outside of Converge, Bannon manages to be prominent, with a successful visual art career and running hardcore label Deathwish Inc. A surprisingly normal sounding (at least in terms of how he sounds on record), introspective guy, Bannon comes off as both wise about the metal and hardcore world while still impressed by and interested in it. In a lengthy interview with MetalSucks, he discussed the musical and lyrical intricacies of Axe to Fall, his approach to artwork in comparison to his vocal work, and people’s changing attitudes toward heavy music as they age.

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Converge have announced Axe to Fall as the title of their new album. It’ll drop October 20 on Epitaph.

Not much else is known about the record right now, except that a) Genghis Tron’s Mookie Singerman does guest vox on one track and b) it is going to be awesome. I mean, maybe it won’t be awesome, but if that’s the case, it’ll be the first not-awesome Converge album, um, pretty much ever.

If you’re not excited about this, you must not have a pulse.

-AR

From a tweet by Converge (follow them!):

Mookie Singerman from GENGHIS TRON coming into the studio this weekend to work with us…

Holy shit, this album is gonna be sick…

-AR

When I posted the inaugural edition of Jew on Jew a couple of weeks back with Daath’s Eyal Levi, MetalSucks commenter nick abrahamson made a suggestion: “how about that dude from Ghengis Tron, he gonna be next??” Ye ask and ye shall receive, Nick.

Only when I pitched “that dude” (aka vocalist Mookie Singerman), I got the following response, despite what he said in a past interview with Paper Thin Walls: “This is a funny idea but technically i’m not even really jewish–only half on my dad’s side and from my understanding you gotsta come from a Jewish vagina to be a real Jew.  I’ve never celebrated any jewish holidays and the only time I’ve been in a synagogue was for friends’ bar mitzvahs in 7th grade so I don’t know how good of an interview i’d be about this…” That’s alright, Mook, fear not; we’re all inclusive Jews here at the MetalSucks Mansion. After the jump, the half-Jew centric interview I conducted with Mookie.

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Electrogrind masters Genghis Tron gave their fans a holiday gift in the form of posting another new song, “City On A Hill,” on their MySpace page. The track will appear on their forthcoming opus, Board Up the House.

The phrase “city upon a hill,” for those of you who didn’t complete the 8th grade, comes from John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon entitled “A Model of Christian Charity,” and was intended to suggest that America should act as the ideal template for all the people of the world: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” Ronald Reagan later used the phrase in his farewell speech after leaving office in ‘89. So while I can’t exactly understand what GT front man Mookie Singerman is yelping about, I have to imagine it has something to do with how very, very disappointed he feels in the U.S. of A. these days.

Board Up the House was produced by Converge’s Kurt Ballou, and hits stores February 19.

-AR