February 2025 Featured Release - The Revolution Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month's feature release for The Revolution, nominated by me (Shadowdoom9 (Andi)), is the 1996 sophomore album by Massachusetts-based metalcore forerunners Converge, Petitioning the Empty Sky. One of the more well-known releases in 90s metalcore, I think this is the true start to the Converge we've known, after their 1994 debut Halo in a Haystack which I thought was just bland hardcore in my opinion. Petitioning the Empty Sky is a milestone in the metalcore realms during the first decade of both the band and the genre, and this EP/album/compilation is in need of more attention here.

https://metal.academy/releases/237

Here's my review summary:

After the overly hardcore punk-ish Halo in a Haystack, the second Converge album Petitioning the Empty Sky marks a great contributor to the birth of the metalcore we know, love, and hate. Who knows what metalcore would've been like if Converge didn't step out of their hardcore comfort zone? I'm glad they did! This album has been praised and put in top-10 hardcore/metalcore album lists, along with other later Converge albums. Petitioning the Empty Sky has caused a new flow in the history of hardcore and heavy metal. If anyone who can't stand metalcore hears this and screams, "What is THIS!?!", the correct answer would be "A revolutionary piece of heavy history!" Converge wasn't the only band with the idea of inventing metalcore. There seems to be a school of bands experimenting with mixing metal with hardcore, but I'm sure the top student of that metal-hardcore experimentation class is, you guessed it, Converge! And it looks like a couple other bands in 1996/1997 (Cave In and The Dillinger Escape Plan) were already following Converge's steps with their own demos/EPs, though they couldn't go the same height as Petitioning the Empty Sky...except maybe Dillinger's Calculating Infinity. Anyway, unlike Halo in a Haystack and the earlier Converge demo EPs that lean more towards traditional hardcore, their second album unleashed the rhythm vs. melody instrumentation and dissonant vocals of metalcore. It is a raw dynamic brute force to dig out of the underground and change two genres' destinies! I can go on about the first track "The Saddest Day" alone and how it perfectly exemplifies the sound of the band and the genre at the time, but it's best left in the full review. Cacophonic guitars drift through with the throbbing rhythm of drums and bass (NOT the genre, the instruments) with a caustic vocal force as vocalist Jacob Bannon screams his lungs out. The album was re-released two years later with live tracks that are great but not as much as the studio part of the album. While I'm sure there are more experimental metalcore albums out there by bands like Cave In, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and even Converge themselves in their ambient-ish masterpiece Jane Doe, Petitioning the Empty Sky is revolutionary in the hardcore and metal fields, ranging from violent chaos to tranquil melody. Generally, it's a #1 metalcore kick-starter pack!

4.5/5

Recommended tracks: "The Saddest Day", "Dead", "Farewell Note to the City", "Color Me Blood Red"

For fans of: early Cave In, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Shai Hulud