Jacob Bannon, lead singer and founding member of Converge, is a man who likes a challenge. In fact, “challenge” seems to be his favorite word; it crops up again and again—how Converge seeks them out, how the band provides them, and how we need them as human beings. Ease is a dirty word in Converge’s universe.
The band’s music is, of course, challenging. Not content to be just fast, brutal, and dark, Converge has consistently, and successfully, pushed every boundary in any category you wish to place it: hardcore, metal, thrash, punk. None of these will fit neatly on Converge.
In Bannon’s own words, “We’re not an easy band to get into. We’re a very abrasive band, very harsh band, a very polarizing band. If somebody’s used to contemporary metal records [and] they hear a band like us, it’s just a big load of trashy noise. If a punk kid hears our band now, he’s used to big singing choruses, pop punk, emotional rock, [and] we’re way too off-putting; we’re vocally way too harsh. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.” (This is what John Darnielle means when he says that metal-core “craves marginalization.”)
This approach has borne some dark and spectacular fruit for Converge. The only way in which it might be considered dull is in the consistency of its critical acclaim. Album after album over the past 15 years has found the band red-lining various critical meters — 10 stars, six skulls, eight guitars, whatever — with its champions escalating in number since the release of its breakthrough, Jane Doe.
That album shellacked Converge’s status as cult gods; it was immediately a touchstone for the hardcore-punk community. Not that it matters to them: “If there’s any key to longevity,” Bannon says, “it’s this: don’t give a shit about what other people think.”
Axe to Fall again finds Converge redefining the game. The band brought in some heavy hitters from around the hardcore and metal communities — members of Cave In, Disfear, and Neurosis pitched in — partly because, as Bannon explains, “Even though [the members of Converge] all come from different places, we’re still very used to working together.
Having these outside people involved made the process longer, more complex. Introducing some other people into something that’s…so comfortable almost forces you to become challenged.”
Showcasing both sides of their famously split musical genetics, the first track “Dark Horse” opens with a freakishly speedy, I-can’t-feel-my-face drum and guitar attack and grafts on the stop-start blasts of hardcore. For the listener, it’s something like being bolted to a giant paint shaker. Axe to Fall gets sludgier about halfway through, but Converge mostly keeps to the quick attack, resisting the prog impulses of some of their colleagues in favor of precision and ferocity.
There’s a clarity and simplicity to it, with each element — Koller’s impossible drumming, Bannon’s intensity, Ballou’s frenzied riffs — showing in high relief against the others. Not only does the entire album command attention, but each part of it commands attention.
As bassist Nate Newton says (in an interview on Converge’s site), “My favorite records over the years were records that—they challenged you. You had to listen to it; you couldn’t just put it on and have it in the background, like ‘Oooh, I love it.’”
And if the music itself doesn’t provide a challenge, throw in the videos, like the one for the title track to Axe to Fall: a black-and-white Clockwork Orange / The Ring video salad of torture and sex and massive amounts of electrical equipment (which I personally don’t think is following code), all culminating somehow in the birth of the ugliest mermaid in the world. The creature that slithers away at the end of the video is what would have happened at the end of The Fly if Jeff Goldblum was replaced with Moby and the fly with a crate of power cords. So there’s that; do with it what you will.
Even at the top of the metal-core mountain, to make anything resembling a living is a challenge. “I don’t make a career out of it still,” Bannon laughs, when asked to explain when he first realized he might make a “career” of Converge.
“I still work plenty of jobs, all affiliated with the music world or punk rock in some way, but…I think that’s one of the things that people invent in their head—that because you have some sort of visibility, that you must be financially successful.”
When we spoke, Converge was driving its van, pulling its trailer-full of equipment south on I-95 to its next gig. The band was in the middle of a package tour with Mastodon, High On Fire, and Dethklok, and Bannon says that part of what made it say yes to the idea was that “every night [is like] playing for a few thousand people, and maybe two hundred of ‘em know who we are. That’s a challenge. You go out there, and you make ‘em hate you or love you.”
The band adheres to a famously punishing schedule, but Bannon balks when asked to name the source of an amazing work ethic, or even to admit to having an amazing work ethic. “We just do what needs to be done; we’re not doing anything superhuman,” he says. “Touring is hard work. Being in a band is hard work.”
The insistence on the ordinary — resistance to accepting some otherworldly quality tacked on from the outside — is part of what brought Bannon to hardcore to begin with. “Hardcore punk was the first music community where the people on stage looked like me,” he says.
“They looked like normal people. They didn’t look like rock stars. There wasn’t decoration. It was just some dudes in jeans and a T-shirt, playing music as hard as they could.”
In its live performances, Converge maintains that ordinary-man demeanor he’s talking about. Yes, there’s a certain amount of bad-ass-ery that it projects, but it does so not through theatrics, lighting, and grandstanding but instead through confrontation, stripping away distance between artist and audience, and literally landing right on the crowd, leaving them with its sweat and blood.
So in a way, it’s true: its members are clearly not some separate species; they do look human up there. They’re brave, committed, and skilled, but they’re not magical, and this lack of artifice is the ultimate challenge to the audience.
You really could do what they’re doing, but can you put in the work? Because what separates me from, for example, Ben Koller, is simple commitment — about 20 years of hard work on the drums. It’s easy to use the excuse that I’m me, and they’re rock stars, but they remove that excuse. So what do you want to do?