Converge - Axe to Fall (2009)Release ID: 242
I dunno why it's taken me so long to get around to checking out Massachusetts metalcore legends Converge's 2009 seventh album "Axe To Fall" as they've been a pretty big band for me for a long time now & never leave me disappointed. There's no exception being made here either as we see the band presenting us with their most ambitious offering to the time & collaborating with a number of mutually-respected musicians to great effect. The album really sounds very fluent & well-defined despite covering a fair amount of musical territory & I particularly enjoy the contribution from Neurosis' Steve Von Till given my strong affiliations with the post-metal masters.
Converge's classic metallic hardcore sound receives good coverage & is complemented by some straight-up hardcore punk tracks ("Effigy", "Losing Battle", "Dead Beat" & "Slave Driver"), a sludge metal monster ("Worms Will Feed, Rats Will Feast") & even a couple of more atmospheric & cerebral post-sludge excursions ( "Cruel Bloom" which reminds me very much of Tom Waits meets Neurosis & the epic album high point that closes out the album "Wretched World"). They've included just enough compositional complexity to keep the listener on their toes & reminded of the elite class of the artist they're indulging in without ever feeling overly showy or pretentious which is a rare quality in this form of art. The production & musicianship are unsurprisingly spectacular too, particularly my man Ben Koller behind the kit who is always the highlight for me. Front man Jacob Bannon puts in one of his best performances too which is well appreciated given that I haven't always loved his delivery. He seems to have gotten better with age with more weight behind his screaming violence.
Unlike most fans, I've never regarded Converge's early 2000's classics as their creative peak, despite the undoubted quality they offer. I've always found the band's appeal to grow stronger as they started to take alternative routes & expand on their sound with 2012's "All We Love We Leave Behind" representing a real highlight for the metalcore subgenre & my personal favourite. "Axe To Fall" very much leaves the impression of being the entrée for that main course & I subsequently rank it as my second favourite Converge release these days. It should be essential listening for all fans of more serious metalcore/hardcore.
For fans of The Chariot, Every Time I Die & Norma Jean.
P.S. The album cover is absolutely stunning too & beautifully compliments the music in my opinion.
As a wise eye-patched agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. once said, "This ain't my first rodeo, kid." Converge have their own two-decade rodeo where the bullhorns can shred your face and gouge your eardrums. Since 1998's When Forever Comes Crashing, their full-length albums are hardcore classics that have all they can do. Continuing to evolve their great expanding boundaries, their seventh album Axe to Fall might be their most dangerously ambitious album yet!
With guitarist Kurt Ballou producing, Axe to Fall is another incredibly extraordinary album, mixing old and new parts of their chaotic discography. While there's still the furious howls of vocalist Jacob Bannon, vintage riff-wrath of Ballou, and the lean mean drumming machine that is Ben Koller, guest musicians shake things up here.
"Dark Horse" is probably the most accessible song by the band while having the usual monstrous metalcore fury. It has a fast technical riff that plays many times in the song, while in the middle there's a crushing breakdown with Jacob Bannon's powerful shrieking. Next song "Reap What You Sow" is a killer song that would make you purposely cr*p your pants, karate-chop through your neighbor's window, take off your sh*t-covered pants, cover your neighbor's head with them, decapitated your neighbor, and kick their sh*t-covered head into the street where a truck would run it over and cause a small brown-red explosion. The furious title track would make you set a locomotive on fire with passengers still inside. "Effigy" has some members of Cave In crashing in to help you detonate a bomb and blow a huge crater in the middle of the city.
The crushing two-part choice cut "Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast" slows the action down to sludgy doom. The neck-breaking "Wishing Well" has guest guitar/vocals by Uffe Cederlund (Disfear, Entombed). "Damages" is another highlight where the fury is replaced by a guitar march by another guest guitarist Tim Cohen (108). The fury doesn't return until "Losing Battle". That song and "Dead Beat" once again have Converge's typical metalcore madness.
Next track "Cutter" has a heavy cutting edge with the band at quick efficiency for exactly 100 seconds. That song and "Slave Driver" recapture the earlier fury, the latter having flowing lyrical imagery. That would actually be the last song here with Bannon's vocals. Taking over the mic is Neurosis' Steve Von Till in "Cruel Bloom", whose gravelly voice and haunting choir make it sound a song by Tom Waits. It's not until the final minute when the vicious fury crashes down. "Wretched World" is a 7-minute atmospheric epic taken over by members of Genghis Tron and drummers John-Robert Conners (Cave In) and Brad Fickeisen (The Red Chord). An astonishing remarkable Converge song!
Axe to Fall has both some of Converge's most accessible tracks and some of their most complex layered tracks that you wouldn't fully digest right away. It's an absolute paradox, and that's OK because it helps make Converge a very advanced band out there. While it's pretty clear that the band has deserved their place in the metal hall of fame for so long, Converge continues releasing challenging music that no other band can follow. Let the axe fall!
Favorites: "Dark Horse", "Axe to Fall", "Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast", "Damages", "Dead Beat", "Cutter", "Wretched World"
