converge

Record #991: Converge – Jane Doe (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As compulsively as I buy records, if vinyl copies of an album are prohibitively expensive, it’s often easier to pretend it just doesn’t exist. But when you’re dealing with a record as monumental as Converge’s Jane Doe, that ignorance is pretty hard to feign. It is a singular masterpiece in the world of heavy music, offering up a record that is superlative in every aspect—including asking price.

But my wife and I have been working our asses off lately, and we decided we deserved to give ourselves a bonus. The first thing I did was head to Discogs to see what legendary and outrageously priced record I might finally be able to afford. It wasn’t a hard decision to make. And even as much as I paid for it (not quite a hundred, but close enough to sting), it’s worth every penny.

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Record #899: Converge – You Fail Me Redux (2004/2016)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve been carrying a shameful secret: I’ve never gotten into Converge.

Barring Bloodmoon, if you count that as a Converge album (I don’t), I’ve spent precious little time with the legendary metalcore band’s catalog. However, this is entirely due to the economics of Converge vinyl, most of which sell for well over $50. It’s been far more affordable for me to just ignore them.

But recently while browsing, I spied a cheap copy of You Fail Me Redux, a remixed version of their 2004 record. I dropped the cash on reputation alone, and it’s been worth every penny.

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Record #868: Bloodmoon – Bloodmoon: I (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

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.

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2021: Best of the Year

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

2021 was a spectacularly immense year for music. It felt like all of the bands who weren’t able to tour last year spent 2020 writing and recording new albums. Then this year, they released them.

With such a flood of new music, it’s worth noting that almost every year end list I’ve seen looks entirely different. Many publications that I could usually predict with decent accuracy (NPR, Pitchfork, etc) listed dozens of albums that I never even heard of. I listened to more music this year than ever before, but I’ve never been so aware of what I was missing. Many albums that I would have/should have liked were released to widespread acclaim (i.e., Quicksand, Every Time I Die, Low, Maybeshewill, Failure, the list goes on) and yet I watched them go by, my attention already stretched to its limits.

In any case, here are the records that really grabbed me this year.

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