The Pitchfork Global Positioning System Satellite tells me that most of you are in the northern hemisphere. As such, it's summer, and you need a good metal album. Jane Doe wasn't released this year, but sometimes you've got to pay dues when they're owed. And Converge might not exactly be heavy metal, either. They got their start in their hometown of Boston in the early nineties, playing covers of their favorite punk and hardcore songs. The blistering fusion unit they've evolved into has been called many things-- hardcore metal, math metal, metalcore-- but they could be ultra-core for all I care. Let's ignore the niceties. Converge is a smart, aggressive, brutal quintet, and Jane Doe will kick your ass repeatedly until it leaves its long imprint in your flabby buttflesh.
The album opens in a throttling surge of bass and drums courtesy of "Concubine." If you're not familiar with this kind of music you might be blown back by the apocalyptic screech of frontman Jacob Bannon's vocals. It's clear with each gritty blast that the guy is screaming out his lungs for you. Naturally, you can't follow a single word but the vox bleed into the furious guitars and it's all acidic corrosion. With the emphasis lately on Fennesz and the pixilated laptop set, it's easy to forget that there's whole realms of sound to be found in the lethal decay of metal guitar's radioactive isotopes. In less than a minute-and-a-half, this song churns from a murderously fast-paced midsection to a slow stomp and back to a breakneck pace.
"Fault and Fracture" picks up seamlessly where the last left off. Once again, the instruments lose their origins, blending in sonic onslaught. Ben Koller's harsh yet amazingly nuanced drumming ties it all together, and the one standout are these hilarious metal trills that peal out from the guitar. Until you reach "Distance and Meaning," it's not clear where the hardcore influence lies. The band slows the pace just enough so you can understand Bannon snarling, "That's where they die, that's where they suicide," amongst the lines wrought by the wiry rhythm. Jane Doe weaves different weights of heavy music together like this, careful to keep the listener interested.
As the album moves on, you realize that Converge aren't just showing off their impressive stylistic range; they're telling a story. "Homewrecker" reaches an awesome peak as Bannon's "No love! No hope!" chorus transmutes to a howl so searing that even veteran scenehounds will be looking for a pit to flail around in. But it's during the tug-of-war vocal trades on "The Broken Vow" that the tale solidifies, one of missed phone calls, old bridges being burned, and lost love. The narrative builds up again and climaxes with "Phoenix in Flight," which begins as a mournful dirge but soon sweeps up through a series of blazing guitar lines that make the elegy even more powerful. You get the sense that the mysterious female mentioned in the lyrics reaches apotheosis with "Phoenix in Flames," an absolute cataclysm of noise that sounds like contact mics were stuffed in a bass drum and tossed down the side of a mountain.
At the end you think back, scratch your head and wonder what the hell it was you listened to. Ultimately, Converge resists easy taxonomy; they're not going to play into that guy's game of "Who's Metal?" As it is, the artwork is strangely concerned with women. A series of faces arise out of stippled dots, all black-ringed eyes and pouty lips vamping from behind the cover of lyric text printed across the page. Is the message that this woman is just like any other, now that she's lost to him? The archetype is unsettling, but no more so than applauding as success the picture of a woman removing her burqa in a country still overrun by thugs and warlords. At least anonymity won't curse Converge for long with an album like this so full of intelligence, skill and intensity that it's simply masterful. Otherwise, I don't know what to call it. That's probably a good thing.
