52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #10

Fantômas – The Director’s Cut

(A&M, 2001)

Buy the album here

The Director’s Cut is an act of genius.  Like many iconic films that bring us a new perspective on familiar material with the release of director’s cuts, such as Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now, Fantômas take recognisable film themes and score and nefariously twist and abuse them.  The result is a mesmerising concoction of batshit crazy tunes that briefly touches down in every genre imaginable, all the while managing to harness the essence of the original music it is distorting.  Every song is injected with joy and enthusiasm for the source material that cannot be faked, and even though those sources are disparate the album holds together in part due to the utter excitement each track builds.  Fantômas is the brainchild of Mike Patton (Faith No More), Buzz Osborne (Melvins), Dave Lombardo (Slayer), and Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle), and is named after a French supervillain created in the early twentieth century, and perhaps most recognised from the film Fantômas (1964).  The band pursues this not-quite-esoteric tone with a track listing that tows the line of being interesting and important while never completely obscure.  If you love the films from which they draw inspiration this is a fun way to experience having your ears drummed off the side of your head by Dave Lombardo, but if you don’t there is still texture, melody, inventiveness, and a sinister energy that will bring you back again and again.

Mike Patton always feels like the maestro behind his various side projects (with the exclusion of Nevermen perhaps), and if you’ve had the chance to see Fantômas live you will have seen him conducting the group from behind his desk of a million noises.  Whether or not they are paying any attention to him is another matter, but it’s a joy to behold and to imagine as the album cracks through this classic film music.  Things get underway with one of the most famous pieces of film music, The Godfather theme, TRANSFORMED INTO UTTER BEDLAM.  All seems well and normal until the band tear into an insane thrash reimagining of the music, as if the band asked themselves what The Godfather would feel like if the entire story happened in thirty seconds, and from that point you expect anything.  The fact that Patton decides to retain his “who needs lyrics when you have barks and grunts” vocal approach from the band’s first album is barely surprising, but it is incredibly effective.  Lombardo’s drumming is off the charts, and when combined with Osborne’s wrist-wrecking riffing, creates a dizzying desire to destroy your neck.  For the duration of that song, NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. 

The fact that they slow the whole thing back down again is only testament to the craziness – as if they thought they might get away with it.  Their adaptation of Henry Mancini’s work on the 60s thriller Experiment in Terror sounds like Melvins playing a fictional David Lynch stage with its drone and lounge jazz components, while “Cape Fear” mimics King’s X but fronted by angels struggling in the spiralling fires of hell (an unbelievable interpretation of one of the greatest and most accessible film music composers, Bernard Herrmann).  Their intent is to inspire a fear in the listener akin to that felt by contemporary viewers of most of these films.  Stories with dark hearts, suspense, and often inexplicable evil met by modern music made of the same.  In “Rosemary’s Baby” Mike Patton’s high-pitched lullaby vocal and distorted xylophone perfectly capture the creeping fear of that film, but the vicious explosions of guitar and drum violence don’t allow the audience to deal with it rationally, keeping them perpetually perched on the edge of their seats.  Alfred Hitchcock would be proud.

“Spider Baby” lightens the mood with its Halloween party atmosphere, mental samples, and background horns.  If anything, it’s an easier and dancier track than the original and shows Patton’s more playful side.  “Vendetta” (not the Danny Dyer one) isn’t as light-hearted an interpretation, it carries the full weight of King Buzzo’s guitar for one, but its inclusion of twinkling keys, vocoder effects, and reality-bending theremin sounds provide effervescent relief from crushing heaviness.  And it’s the perpetual guessing game of when these moments of frenetic insanity will burst forth that give the album so much life.  The peak of this art of destructive homage is found in “The Omen (Ave Satani)” and a frankly bizarre and brilliant reimagining of the music from the Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant romantic comedy, Charade.  Buzzo’s guitar scratches at the beginning of this song only give slight warning of the unexpected barrage of belligerent rhythm section and weird staccato vocal barks.  Patton does his best to smooth this out with his insatiably rich voice, but the hardcore attack has the final word and, much like The Omen, brings out the darkness that exists beneath the surface of even seemingly innocent characters.  “The Omen” is an almost indescribable thrash/hardcore outburst with the original Latin prayer lyrics sung in hyperbolic, monk-like fashion with a hardcore edge.  Lombardo’s drumming is sensational, and the speed of the whole thing has you bewildered and seeking respite as the track segues into the dark slough of “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”.  Fantômas, at this point, have me in the palm of their collective hand.         

And talking of being in the palm of someone’s hand, given David Lynch’s leaching, leaking, and blending of realities in Twin Peaks: The Return, it is a shame that Fantômas weren’t invited to play their great version of the music from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on the stage at The Roadhouse.  The mix of breakneck snare, Sci-Fi laser sound effects, overly earnest vocals, and portentous bass would have suited Lynch’s unsettling combination of pure evil, human kindness, and confused/confusing realities.  With all these realities colliding at once I may have avoided the fanboy embolism that this album induces on every listen.  Fantômas made one of my favourite ever albums.  

     

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #17

36 Crazyfists – A Snow Capped Romance

(Roadrunner, 2004)

Buy the album here

That first experience of moving away from home, of leaving family and friends to live far away, is one of the most testing.  To embark on a new life without that emotional support around you, no familiar faces, and no quick fixes makes those connections you still have even more important.  That’s why packing a selection of CDs before I moved to rural Japan in 2004 turned out to be one of the most important small moments in my life.  That little anchor to home meant I always felt like I had somewhere to turn when loneliness would punch me in the gut, or when I simply needed to express myself in my own language.  There were various albums that meant a lot to me during my two years living in the hills of southwest Fukushima, Black Label Society – Hangover Music Vol. VI and a CD of ceilidh music by The Foundry Band as honourable mentions, but A Snow Capped Romance is the defining one.  Some of my clearest memories of that time have this music as their backdrop, and I’ll never forget how it helped me think of home, appreciate where I was, and remember the love I have for my friends and family.  36 Crazyfists might not be a band name that conjures these sorts of thoughts, but it belies the strength of their songwriting and their emotional honesty, and I’ll always be thankful for those qualities.

While Bitterness The Star was an exciting and interesting debut, “Circle The Drain” in particular capturing my imagination, A Snow Capped Romance represented a gigantic leap in the band’s abilities.  It had always been clear that each of the musicians - Steve Holt on guitar, Brock Lindow on vocals, Thomas Noonan on drums, and Mick Whitney on bass – could play the hell out of their instruments, but in cleaning up the production, adding a dash more emo, and giving more consideration to the “shape” of the whole record, 36 Crazyfists made a truly memorable album with vital vocal hooks, a metalcore guitar masterclass, and an impressive yet self-effacing rhythm section performance that deserves celebration.  Lying somewhere between mid-career Incubus and Vision of Disorder, there is enough outright aggression and heart-on-sleeve sensitivity to satisfy fans of hardcore and emo alike.  Take back-to-back tracks “Bloodwork” and “Kenai” as an example of the whole: the former an impassioned single with loads of melodic clean vocals, an Incubus-esque intro, and big hooky guitar parts that landed it on a Resident Evil movie soundtrack; the latter a knife attack in song form with cyclonic guitar riffs where the choruses are momentary escapes from the assault on your senses.  Both feel like 36 Crazyfists songs and never suggest they are overstretching themselves, but provide a scope to this work that means I return over and over. 

I’m still moved to tears hearing the words from “Kenai”, and I can remember driving the sparsely populated snowy mountain roads alone being reminded of the distance to home, the little hole I felt in my heart, and the honour I had to have such good family and friends:

Over these mountains I feel safe.

And bless the sound, return the day.

Over these mountains I feel safe.

And I guess I miss my home,

I could not stay.

I'll return, it's alright, I'm ok.

These emotions are reignited in “Skin and Atmosphere” with a melodramatic yet insightful examination of a struggling relationship told through delicate verses and driving, powerful choruses.  Brock Lindow’s screams of “I want you to prove me wrong” are instantly relatable, and herein lies the band’s strength: in giving equal footing to expressions of anger, longing, despair, hope, and love, they harness the complexity of human relationships, both with people and places, and give the listener freedom to feel all these emotions at once.  “Destroy The Map” taps into this again with its irresistible chorus and guest vocal by Raithon Clay, while “Installing the Catheter” and “Cure Eclipse” turn up the hardcore intensity again with dark themes, heavier bridge sections, and Lindow’s soaring and scything vocals.  Bringing an album of this emotional intensity to a close could be tricky, but in the patient beauty and emotional brutality of “Waterhaul” 36 Crazyfists manage to consolidate all the themes they have explored in one mid-paced, burning ember of a song.  It seems to be performed both by candle light and wildfire, before it drifts off into the back of your mind leaving only traces of the emotions you felt, the people you saw, and the places you visited along the way.

Even if I lose my hearing as I get older I’ll never forget the sounds, emotions, and thoughts of this album.  There are few albums that have ever managed to perfectly fit my personality, but this is one, and it taught me that music need not always be an escape from real life, but sometimes a reminder of those places and people in that very real life.  It’s an album that makes me think of the people and places I love, and to never take them for granted.  And with that impact on me, this album was one of the first things I thought of when I recently returned to the village in Japan where I had lived over 11 years ago.   

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #20

Zao – The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here

(Ferret, 2006)

Buy the album here

Metalcore is dogged by the reputation that its bands all sound the same.  It is the heavy metal scene’s heavy metal.  But as heavy metal fans we know nothing is this straight forward.  The sub-genre has highs and lows like any other, and for every complete turd there is a hidden gem somewhere.  One of these is Zao’s 2006 effort produced by the incomparably great Steve Albini.  For every over-produced, slick, almost sickly sweet metalcore album Zao have delivered a minor antidote, and as the modern metal world fawned over Killswitch Engage’s all-too-earnest End of Heartache, Zao were working on giving up control in the studio and bringing something raw back to the scene.  The result was the deeply scary The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here.

Built on live performances transferred to analogue tape and over-driven vocals, The Fear… is testament to the immediacy and brutality that can be squeezed out of one of metal’s most maligned sub-genres.  Zao have no fear taking inspiration from hardcore and black metal simultaneously to make a that has its listeners clinging on in more ways than one.  And with Steve Albini helping to craft that sound, it is a cliff-edge experience throughout: the raucous sound is constantly seconds away from imploding, testing the limits of your speakers.  To keep listeners teetering on the brink the whole record without actually dropping them off and losing them forever is a skill, but one that Zao have mastered here.

With the addition of Martin Lunn and Jeff Gretz, surviving members Dan Weyandt and Scott Mellinger pushed the band towards this new sound, and though they’ve looked elsewhere since, it is their most impactful and memorable album.  From the dark, patient, then explosive opening of “Cancer Eater” to the rolling, punk-infused spirit of “A Last Time For Everything” with its petrifying, over-amplified outro, The Fear… is designed to make you feel uncomfortable throughout.  Unlike much of metalcore, and indeed Zao’s other albums, little is offered in terms of melodic escape.  Weyandt’s vocals are almost exclusively growled and screamed with a near black metal intensity, while the live production style lends itself more keenly to aural aggression and abrasiveness.  The lyrics focus on humanity’s helplessness and lack of control in the face of death, loneliness, failure, and the fear these generate.  There is no hopeful and uplifting chorus to look forward to, the listener must endure and somehow come out stronger under their own willpower.  Weyandt reminds us of the simple, dark truths of life, and refuses to see the positive side on this album:

Everything you love will fly away
On the wings of an unknown destiny
Behind the sun and disappearing sky
Everyone you love will pass away

This is not music made to make you happy, but crafted to move you and make you contemplate your own fears.

“Physician Heal Thyself” builds a wall of sound with furious, dirty riffs and cascading drums which Weyandt’s vocals attempt to pull down with vicious growls and Converge-esque grunts.  The breakdown towards the end reminds us that this is metalcore, but third track “Everything You Love Will Soon Fly Away” discards this balance in favour of bleak blackened hardcore.  It rips into existence with the sounds of furious instruments bleeding out through one another, and not until the isolated melodic chorus vocal of “It’s Hard Not to Shake With a Gun In Your Mouth” do we have a reprieve.  The spoken word section and key change explosion of the bridge in this track is the most idiosyncratically Zao, and one of many highlights.  “There is No Such Thing as Paranoia” slows the pace momentarily, but this only allows the sheer weight of the creeping fear to rest heavier on your chest.  With each wretched scream, cymbal crash, and twisted riff it becomes harder and harder to breathe.  The lyrically questionable “Pudgy Young Blondes With Lobotomy Eyes” does nothing to alleviate this feeling with coiled hardcore riffing and an expansive bridge section with sheet ice riffing.  It all comes to a head with “A Last Time for Everything” in which one of the lightest and punkiest songs of the album also succumbs to the fear, being swamped by the deafening mantra, “the fear is what keeps us here”, until it collapses under the strain of its own distorted, broken sound.

This is not an album to be listened to in a darkened room, not as release from hard times in your life, not to be visited in your loneliest moments.  You’d better be ready to listen to this.  It pins you to a wall and asks you all the questions you would rather avoid.  It is relentless in pursuing negativity with horrid sounds, crushing lyrics, and no obvious points of escape.  The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here denies you the cheap “pop” moments that make metalcore so easy to like, and instead invites you to look in to the darkest parts of your life.  If you survive that process you might just find a place in your heart for this record.    

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #21

Corrosion of Conformity – In The Arms of God

(Sanctuary, 2005)

Buy the album here

Let’s start by addressing why this Corrosion of Conformity album, and not Deliverance or Wiseblood, is the topic of this post.  When In The Arms of God made its long-awaited appearance I had been a COC fan for nearly ten years, and I considered both their classic mid-90s albums among my all-time favourites.  Deliverance and Wiseblood are genre-defining albums that bridged the gap from heavy metal to more MTV-friendly hard rock without sacrificing an ounce of the band’s originality, credibility, or identity.  Their southern-fried metal-rock crossover is infused with politicised anger, provocative lyrics, and cultured musicianship.  They are important albums that continue to dominate my thoughts and shape the music that I’m drawn towards.  They are the albums that COC fans will discuss and debate online to determine which is their best.  But neither of them have quite captured my imagination or challenged my preconceptions of the genre in the way of In The Arms of God.  This is an album that intertwines the epic, the personal, the domestic, and all things in between.  It constructs for itself an aural atmosphere that enhances the songs in the moment and the memory of your listening experience after the fact.  It is impassioned song-writing laid down in surprising and exciting ways, and I have no doubts that there are many more COC fans who consider it their favourite record, whether consciously or not.  I am writing about this COC album because it is their best.

Flooding in on a wave of organ, the opening solo sets out COC’s approach on this record: they don’t give a shit what people expect.  This record is going to go where the hell it pleases, is going to ask you questions you’ve never been asked, and isn’t really going to care what your answer is.  It is at times catastrophically heavy but somehow never steps outside of the hard rock/metal crossover for which COC are known.  “Stone Breaker” may have taken fans by surprise on first listen, but it is a spine-tingling and dynamic song that plays with Led Zeppelin guitar epic stylings, hardcore aggression, and gigantic, irresistible riffs that will have people’s heads flying off their necks.  All that without even mentioning the stellar drumming performance of stand-in drummer, Stanton Moore, who brings a depth of sound and drum fill prowess that are impressive and memorable.  The seamless manner in which Mike Dean’s bass sound and Moore’s drum lines work together is testament to their abilities and contributes to a heavier overall sound.  That heaviness continues with “Paranoid Opioid” in which we are thrashed relentlessly by a riff from COC’s hardcore days while being spun into confusion by the psyched-out vocals.  As strong as this opening duo is, it’s third track “It Is That Way” that will have fans feeling at home.  The train samples and echoed drums of the intro give the impression the band are playing in some NOLA dirt patch, while the slower paced bluesy guitar tones from Woody Weatherman and Pepper Keenan’s welcoming drawl hark back to earlier work, and perfectly set up the listener for the album’s most idiosyncratic and atmospheric passage.

“Dirty Hands Empty Pockets/Already Gone”, like its title, is split: part rumbling bass with gravelly spoken word, part giant riff explosions.  It feels like pure COC, but is bold enough to spend more time on building anticipation than on the catchy, headbanging sections.  It’s a decision that pays off with each lunge into that riff being a highlight of the album. “Rise River Rise” is another.  Again displaying patience and a willingness to stand out from its surroundings, this track takes the layered atmospherics to the hilt with three guitar sounds flowing over one another.  A thick electric sound forms the foundation upon which an electro-acoustic riff slides, before squealing leads offer accents and changes of direction.  Pepper Keenan’s hard rock clean vocal and the wailed and whispered backing vocals perfectly complete the epic disaster atmosphere that ties so neatly into the biblical feel of this album.  It is a truly entrancing song.

After extended atmospherics “Never Turns to More” bursts to life with phenomenal drumming and breakneck riffing.  The long bridge section is filled with beautiful guitar and vocal details and fully justifies this track’s status as the album’s longest.  “Infinite War” is much quicker to get to the point.  Blistering with hardcore aggro, tight riffing, and pounding drumming, this song steps on your neck to ram home its simple message.  In the brief moments it eases up the musicianship is astounding.  Weatherman’s leads, the weight of Moore’s drums feeling like 60s and 70s psych, and Keenan’s vocals all bring unique qualities that enhance and diversify this brutal rager. 

COC introduce the album’s final passage with the classically mid-paced “World On Fire”.  Weatherman’s closing solo is epic, and is the final moment of light before the melancholy of “Crown of Thorns” and the utter devastation of “In The Arms of God”.  The former is upsetting with its cries of pain, distorted spoken word samples, and eerie rocking chair sounds building a portentous atmosphere.  The latter takes that atmosphere and throws it in to the heavens with rumbling and cascading drum fills, escalating riffing, and furious screams of Nietzschean angst.  It feels like every muscle is trying to tear itself from your bones as you try to keep up with the desire to explode like the music you’re listening to.  At this moment the entire last hour of music you have listened to feels like nothing more than precursor to this insane riff epic.  It is not without interesting detail either, but the final feeling is one of pure heavy metal exhaustion where every last bit of passion, energy, and anger has been spent in releasing this built-up pressure.

In The Arms of God is breath-taking.  It hits me on every level as hard now as it did when it was released.  There are no faults to be found, no spare moments, and no wasted ideas.  Everything contributes to the whole and that whole makes each song better in return.  I might not convince every COC fan that this record is their best, but I hope that everyone who reads this takes an hour in a room with a stereo turned all the way up, and sets themselves In The Arms of God.  

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #32

Rollins Band – Life Time

(Texas Hotel Records, 1987)

Do Not Buy the album here... because it is very difficult to find

Henry Rollins is a subcultural icon and touchstone for an entire generation of heavy music fans longing for the anger, cynicism, and intelligence of early punk.  In a decade renowned for its burgeoning materialism, greed, and Charlie Sheen in suits, thrash metal captured many of those fans in its underground scene and went on to become the driving force behind heavy music moving in to the 90s.  But punk and hardcore were still breathing and burning a level further underground with bands like Minor Threat, Bad Religion, The Dead Kennedys, and Henry Rollins’ own Black Flag leading the way for a collection of fans who watched many of their favourite bands break up or just disappear.  In fact, in leaving Black Flag in 1986, Rollins may have flirted with alienating the very scene that he was helping to keep alive.  But his solo band debut, produced by Minor Threat and Fugazi main man Ian MacKaye, captures all his hardcore aggression and punk spirit, and moulds a whole new bluesed-out foundation for his razor-sharp tirades.  Life Time is throat tearing, vein bursting, macho posturing, thought provoking, inspirationally angry heavy music from a man who now travels, reads, writes, and speaks in the name of self-enlightenment and equality.

Opener “Burned Beyond Recognition” pulls no punches lurching straight in with a vicious drum roll and Rollins’ patented screams of “yeah yeah yeah”.  The rhythm section immediately feels thicker and heavier than Black Flag with the screeching punk sound of the guitar often sliding off it to give Rollins’ shouts, screams, and roars centre stage.  Despite the vocals dominating the song, it is evident the Rollins Band musicians are potent.  Chris Haskett, Sim Cain, and Andrew Weiss balance their sounds so perfectly, and MacKaye has an incredible ear for punk dynamics, ensuring that every note is punched in to your ears.  The intensity doesn’t let up on “What Am I Doing Here?” in which Weiss’ unrelenting bass plucking will grab you by the neck and shove your ears right in Rollins’ gaping maw.  It’s a straightforward tale of alienation but, as with everything Rollins does, it is delivered with unwavering conviction.  Even the comparatively wandering experimentalism of “1,000 Times Blind” is confident and slams you against the wall with huge explosions of power.  There is no room for uncertainty on Life Time and, in true Rollins style, no life time to waste.

The first true highlight of the album is “Lonely”.  It is more reminiscent of Black Flag with its direct riff, percussive bass and simple structure, but will feel familiar to those who know Henry Rollins from his “big hit” video for “Liar”.  The aggressively cynical take on human relationships and the cutting delivery are attractive and repulsive in equal measure, but there’s no question the performance is breath-taking.  Chris Haskett’s guitars crash in to Sim Cain’s drums throwing shrapnel in all directions, piercing the hearts and minds of unprepared listeners.  If you weren’t on board before this, you are now, and so begins this album’s stretch of focused brilliance.  “Wreck-Age” shakes you with its pulsating rhythm and dystopian world view before dumping you at the unforgiving doorstep of “Gun In Mouth Blues”.  It’s an almost indescribably intense track, building from a bare and gently drummed intro to frightening crescendos of screamed croons or, from now on, “scroons”.  Henry Rollins is for 8 minutes a scrooner who lays bare the anger and frustration of some disaffected everyperson in a style not unlike Peter Finch in Network.  It is musically simple, but the constant burning anger that feeds its existence and sudden outbursts is overwhelming, and will have even the mildest listener screaming along.

“You Look at You” and “If You’re Alive” keep the intensity flowing, but it’s “Turned Out” that provides the album’s next highlight.  Led by Rollins’ confidently spoken verses and more stirring screams of his favourite word “yeah”, it has more shape to it than some of the other tracks, and gives you the impetus to really build in to the heavy chorus.  The bridge section truly feels like the album has succumbed to its own heaviness.  And on the original release that is, in fact, the case, as it was the last song.  For those of us who came to the album by the time it had received reissue treatment, the Do It EP tracks had been attached to the end allowing Rollins Band to kick us in the head three more times on Life Time with what must be Rollins’ personal anthems, “Do It”, “Move Right In”, and “Next Time”.  The cover of Pink Fairies’ “Do It”, in particular, gives you the basic Rollins ethos: get shit done.  He wants you to do, experience, live, learn, change, mess up, try again, and never forget that your life is not for anyone else to live.  Witnessing all he’s done and experiencing the intensity of the man, it seems as good an ethos as any other.  Do it.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #41

Converge – Jane Doe

(Equal Vision, 2001)

Buy the album here

Living in Japan as a foreigner is a strange experience. Parts of your life become diluted to unrecognisable levels, other things become so concentrated and focused you can see them in new and wonderful ways, such as the phenomenon of the Japanese super tour. Bands who would sell out mid-sized venues independently throughout Europe and America find themselves having to combine their tours with other such bands to make ends meet or drum up enough buzz. Previously unimaginable line-ups for club gigs became a stirring reality and dizzying prospect for me while in Japan. The pinnacle of this was the confusingly named “Extreme The Dojo Vol. 11” tour in 2005 featuring Isis, Mastodon, and headliners Converge. All three bands had just released arguably their best ever albums months prior and fans were dying to see new material from Panopticon by Isis, Mastodon's Leviathan, and You Fail Me by Converge. But for me it was the first chance I'd had to see Converge live and my mind started grappling with what it would be like to experience the ferocity of Jane Doe live. The thin walls of my house barely protected the ears of my neighbours as I hit the “repeat” button on my stereo and prepared myself over and over for the frighteningly unhinged pit I expected for songs like “Homewrecker”.

Converge combine hardcore and punk attitude and aggression with the heaviness and technical prowess of extreme metal. It's a frightening concoction, and nowhere is that more clearly evidenced than in “Thaw” with its frantically stabbing main riff, caustic vocals, and gigantic grooves. The coldness of its title is reflected in the unfeeling nature of that malevolent riff, but the passion of Jacob Bannon's vocals, the fury of Ben Koller's drumming, and the big bass sound provide points of emotional connection in the ice storm of pain that is created. “Fault and Fracture” also accomplishes the incredible feat of scaring and welcoming the listener at the same time. Every riff angle and cymbal hit feels like glass is being shattered on your head, but there's always enough to grab hold of in the panic to make sure you don't lose consciousness. In “Heaven In Her Arms” it is the feeling of being irresistibly pulled in to the emotional death of which Bannon writes that creates fear for the listener. The riffs, time changes, drum fills, Nate Newton's rolling bass, and screams come at you from everywhere, giving you no time to defend yourself, and, just as you have given in to the inevitability that you won't survive this song, Kurt Ballou breaks it all down with one of the grooviest riffs on the entire album. It acts as an epitaph to the person who has metaphorically died “in her arms”, but also as glorious respite from the emotional and aural violence surrounding it.

Converge understand that their belligerent metalcore needs shaping and texturing, and we find that in the alt-hardcore of “Distance and Meaning”, and the hypnotic, bass-led, sludginess of “Hell to Pay”. Back to back it's a combination that will throw the new Converge listener way off track, before the vicious attack of “Homewrecker” drags them back in to the maelstrom. And, let's be honest, this is what Converge fans have come for, aggressive riffs, fast drumming, and barked vocals; exactly what they get on the Napalm Death-like opening of “The Broken Vow”, and on metalcore blueprint “Bitter and Then Some”. The latter is as perfectly concentrated a metallic hardcore track as you could hope to find. The main riff is frantic but with the full-bodied sound you might expect from Hatebreed, while the vocals are equally potent going with the riff or against it, and each drum fill is perfectly timed and delivered. And at 1:27 in duration, it shakes you up quickly and leaves you gasping. By contrast, title track and album closer, “Jane Doe” is a heavy, patient, epic, post-hardcore plea for the pain to be killed. It contextualises all of the violence that has preceded it, giving way to bare-chested honesty, hope, and even a sense of understanding. In fact, if you are seeking to understand who Converge are, simply listen to album opener “Concubine” and “Jane Doe”, read Bannon's beautiful, poetic lyrics, and listen again. You shall have all you need to know.

I was seeing a nice Japanese girl at the time of the “Extreme the Dojo” tour in 2005, and there was a bit of a language barrier. There's a sense that it's degrees harder to know and understand a person when you can't communicate easily or express yourself as you normally would, but we got on well. I told her about the gig and how excited I was to see all these bands together and this one album in particular. She asked to hear Jane Doe, so I simply hit “play”. After twenty seconds of “Concubine” she was gone. Out the door, in to her car, and, I assumed, ready to speed home. I convinced her to stay and watch some equally disturbing Japanese game show instead. Months later she confided to me that she had never been that scared by anything before, and spent most of that night wondering if I was an actual maniac. This is what Jane Doe does. It scares people. It makes people question their lovers' character and sanity. It makes people think about what they want from their lives. And for an album written about a relationship painfully deteriorating, it came really close to ending another.