Converge - Axe to Fall

Tue 16th Mar, 2010 in Music Reviews

Converge don’t really care if you found records since Jane Doe difficult pills to swallow, or if you thought that You Fail Me couldn’t live up to its predecessors – in Converge’s world, it’s a “done, on to the next one” attitude that keeps them going.

Maybe it’s for this reason that Axe to Fall, a relentless beast of metalcore in its truest sense, is the most refreshing and interesting thing the band have put down on record. Not in any mood to attempt to please “old school” fans – or anybody else for that matter – the quartet continues their assault on the ears an unapologetic force.

Axe to Fall, in somewhat typical Converge fashion, chooses not to give its listeners a moment to sink into the atmosphere. It turns out to be more of a plunge-dive – with the first four tracks delivered in in less than ten minutes. Dark Horse, Reap What You Sow, the title track and Effigy all come charging full speed ahead in a blur of pounding, racing drums, chunky riffs and Jacob Bannon’s guttural roar of excruciatingly pessimistic poetry (“I need to stop this suicide machine/I need to stop this self-destruction”).

The six-minute Worms Will Feed / Rats Will Feast maintains several of the band’s best-known traits, but expands them and develops them in a series of musical movements. Possibly the most hard-hitting is the drawn-out breakdown, which makes the musical crashes land with far more force given the distance between them. Bannon’s delivery of gory couplets such as “Saw you slither around their necks/Sinking teeth into their flesh” certainly don’t detract from the no-bullshit brutality either. Though there are moments particularly in the album’s second half, where the band fall into a lapse of repetition, reworking the same construct of ideas and emotions.

It is also interesting to note the plethora of additional musicians that make appearances on the record. Of these, it is those that appear on the final two tracks, Cruel Bloom and Wretched World, that contribute the most to proceedings. Sounding like a Tom Waits-themed carnival ride, these sinister tracks throw a complete curveball to listeners and take the album’s apocalyptic worldview into the depths of the darkside. Vocalists Steve von Till of Neurosis and Mookie Singerman give the songs an entirely new dimension that the core band could not possibly provide – this was a very wise collaboration to make. However on the other tracks any marks of identifiable appearances are tided over in the ever-continuing musical stampede.

In spite of obvious faults, Axe to Fall is the closest the band have come yet to eliminating their imperfections. Regardless of what your history with the band is, you’ve nothing to lose by experiencing this record – despite its overwhelmingly pessimistic lyrical outlook, the album will most likely be a positive experience for its listeners.