Despite their tendon-tearing, odd-time calisthenics, tech-metallurgists Converge are just a bunch of dudes with guitars. Oh, but they're not. They're good at deceiving us: What hits the tongue like straight blitzkrieg metal leaves a peculiar aftertaste.
It isn't always easy to find the mosh-pulse at the center of You Fail Me, Converge's seventh and definitive album, so unless you don't mind a stiff neck, you might want to internalize these songs before rushing out to the band's live show. Converge are some of the most fearsome technicians in metal, but unlike Dillinger Escape Plan, whose songs are like feats of 22nd-century civic engineering, they're unusually organic. You Fail Me is all hardscrabble local hardcore in its gritty viscera.
Ever maturing and honing, Converge have maintained a fairly consistent sound over their nearly 15-year career, so how does You Fail Me differ from cult classics such as Jane Doe and When Forever Comes Crashing? For one, the band have jumped ship from Equal Vision Records-- a veritable subterranean hardcore dynasty and Converge's home for the better part of the last half-decade-- to quasi-major Epitaph. You Fail Me is a more polished album, but this works to their advantage: Not only have Converge retained (even sharpened) their razorblade cut, they're now bolstered by a brawny low-end. Jacob Bannon's vocals are mixed lower than on previous efforts-- a popular metal technique-- and though his sautéed larynx is still a distinctive part of the mix, it takes on a comelier, more elemental quality.
The real magic of the record lies in its pacing. You Fail Me is Converge's first capital-A album. The one-two combo of "First Light" and "Last Light" is an auspicious opening. In the former, Kurt Ballou's echoey guitar peals are a perfect prelude to one of the band's most concussive, exacting and anthemic songs. Ever. "Last Light" is inestimably great, industrially precise but quaking with vitality. Ballou even squeezes in a reprise of his opening cadenza before the super-colossal breakdown, which somehow manages to reign in the song's momentum without sacrificing velocity.
You Fail Me never peters out. Converge are still programmed for hyper-speed, but Ballou throws in some artier stuff where he can, leveling "In Her Blood" and "Hanging Moon" with fairer-- if not quite huggable-- melodies. Can you spell 5/4 without prog? "Heartless" can; its jaunty odd-meter intro is almost danceable, in an early Dismemberment Plan sort of way. The album's totemic centerpieces-- the title track and "In Her Shadow", which combined account for a third of its runtime-- juxtapose the album's densest and most pastoral moments without seeming forced.
Fifteen years is a long fucking time. And yet Converge still look young, to say nothing of the way they play. There's always something to be said for sticktuitiveness, but the unbroken lineal ascent of Converge's ouvre is a lesson to those of us who thought we'd long outgrown our scene days: Don't judge too soon, for the dudes in cuffs may yet return to kick your perfidious ass.
