Review by SilentScream213 for Converge - Petitioning the Empty Sky (1996)

Converge’s debut album was a rough, underwhelming and poorly mixed mess that had some good ideas on display, but just wasn’t executed well. The sophomore Petitioning the Empty Sky is much more favorably received and fixes some of the issues from before, namely the terrible production.

The album is much more concise and consistent, and delivers a great show of energy found both in the rhythm section and the dissonant riffs. It’s got an odd mix of short Punk-length songs and Prog-length compositions, and displays a good amount of variation and growth throughout. The vocals unfortunately remain terrible and I can’t make out a word here.

It’s fine, but it doesn’t grip me as much as others I’m afraid. No memorable riffs on top of a gruelingly bad vocal performance makes the relisten factor very low.