Usually, when artists announce a collaboration, you can make a pretty educated guess as to what the end result might sound like. Take for instance Volcano Choir, the union of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and mathy post rockers Collections of Colonies of Bees, who released music that sounds like Bon Iver playing mathy post rock. Or May Our Chambers Are Full by Thou and Emma Ruth Rundle, which found ERR offering her gothic country vocals over Thou’s relentless sludge.

But then you have projects like Bloodmoon, which unites all of Converge with Chelsea Wolfe, her ubiquitous collaborator Ben Chisholm, and Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky. There isn’t much common ground between the chaotic mathcore, gothic doom, and melodic space metal of the three respective projects to predict what it might sound like.

There’s no low-hanging fruit so ripe that it’s practically picking itself off of the vine. Instead, this album is carefully and laboriously worked. It sounds cultivated, not gathered. And, every drop of sweat was worth it.

The project known as Bloodmoon (which I will use as to refer to the supergroup instead of simply “Converge” as listed on the jacket) was first formed in 2016, then with Neurosis guitarist Steve Von Till, to reimagine Converge tracks as post metal songs. They played four shows with this set before returning to their own projects.

But that collaboration whetted their appetite for more, because all but Von Till reunited a few years later to write an album from the ground up. According to Converge vocalist Jacob Bannon, Bloodmoon I was a true collaboration, with all seven members fully involved in the writing process.

And it shows. The record drifts between the tendencies of every project represented, from the swirling gothic sludge of Chelsea Wolfe’s solo work (“Scorpion’s Sting,” “Coil“) to the acidic hardcore of Converge (“Lord of Liars,” “Tongues Playing Dead“), and the swaggering atmospheric heaviness of Cave In (“Flower Moon,” “Daimon“). But even when it sounds the most like one project or the other, the other collaborators are consistently present: Wolfe’s haunting alto soars above Convergy breakdowns, Bannon’s scream ignites the air around the slower doom tracks, Brodsky’s octave-shifted guitar—as recognizable as his voice—shimmers in the atmosphere through most of the record.

But of course, the best moments are when Bloodmoon ceases to sound like one collaborator or another and sounds like Bloodmoon—such as on the track “Blood Moon,” in which fiery heaviness emerges from the dark murk like a chariot of fire. “Viscera of Men” reverses that formula, a brief moment of Convergy mathcore dissipating into the fog of gothic metal.

The most stirring moment on the disc though may be the penultimate track. “Crimson Stone” is an emotive ballad led by Wolfe through interweaving guitar arpeggios that erupts with heavy chords and call and response vocals between Wolfe and Brodsky’s harmonies and Bannon’s screams. It’s so affecting that even the closing track “Blood Dawn” merely hovers above the smoldered remains of the song before it.

Oddly enough, despite its critical acclaim, I’ve seen many people trashing this album. Some of this might be due to confusion over it being listed as a Converge record, but I know a few people who have dismissed it as scattered and uninspired. And sure, it might have suffered a bit due to the inevitable comparisons to May Our Chambers Be Full, which preceded it by a few months. But all of this misses the point. This isn’t a Converge record, nor even a Converge plus Collaborators record. Bloodmoon is an entity unto itself, and it does not kowtow to expectations of what it should be. When you accept it on its own stubborn terms, it is a truly staggering work. The only disappointing thing about it is that there isn’t a Bloodmoon II. Yet.