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An unstoppable force

This time is (once again) right for Converge
By MATT PARISH  |  October 15, 2009


VIDEO: Converge, "No Heroes," live at ICC Church, Allston

Appreciation of Converge is one of those things that comes after you stop trying too hard, like driving stick without stalling at the red lights. The music doesn't offer easy access points — the drums blur impossibly by, the guitars speed past like pissed-off modem signals, and forget about the vocals. Your blender has a more welcoming voice than lead screamer Jake Bannon.

No, you just have to wait till the time is right, because there is a hook in there. The Boston quartet (okay — Salem, Beverly, and Brooklyn at this point) have persisted through two decades of hardcore and metal evolution, ending up a little farther ahead each year. You can attribute that to their virtuoso technicality, their airtight composition, or the general mayhem that erupts at their shows. But the point is, Converge have made a career out of loud, fast, hyper-detailed music delivered with brute force from humble VFW stages and iffy PA systems across the world for going on 20 years. So it's interesting that their latest — Axe To Fall (Epitaph), which drops this Tuesday — pulls back some of the extremes in favor of an almost playful rediscovery of straight-up lasers-and-jean-jackets metal. Which could strike a funny chord for long-time fans.

When I get guitarist Kurt Ballou on the phone to ask about life in arena-rock land, he's wandering the halls of the Seattle Seahawks' Qwest Field, which houses the WaMu Theater, where Converge are about to open for Mastodon and Dethklok. (This bill will hit the House of Blues here in Boston at the end of the month.) The tour is a few steps outside the band's normal comfort zone. Ballou assesses the situation objectively. "Let's put it this way: there are four buses in this tour, and we're still pulling our van up to the stage to load in. Most of the roadies have better travel accommodations than we do."

He continues, "I think we're playing more for Cartoon Network fans than anything else this year," referring to the cartoon-metal heroes of Metalocalypse's Dethklok. "We're getting heckled, and that's fine. I don't want us to become babies that are just used to getting what we want."

As we discuss the band's early days in Boston following a kickstart at Andover High ("Yeah, we played the talent show one year"), it does seem that things have always worked out for them. After years of living in Kenmore Square, Ballou was sent packing from an apartment on Blaine Street in Allston by roommates who were tired of the constant traffic of bands in and out of his basement studio. "Everyone else stayed in the apartment after I left, but three weeks later, the place caught on fire. I would have lost everything in the studio."

Converge's first show at the Middle East in '93 resulted in a rare opening-band encore. "One of the bands canceled, so after the second band played, we set up again and played everything we knew. Nobody complained — there were only seven people there, and they were all our friends."

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ARTICLES BY MATT PARISH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   AN UNSTOPPABLE FORCE  |  October 15, 2009
    Appreciation of Converge is one of those things that comes after you stop trying too hard, like driving stick without stalling at the red lights.
  •   CRASH PROOF  |  September 29, 2009
    I've never trusted music that's too engineered, too perfect. Headphones on the drummer and a hundred tracks running off a laptop? Most bands practice and practice to get things just right, but it's that threat of the unexpected that makes a show worth seeing.
  •   UP AND AUTUMN!  |  September 15, 2009
    Behold! The prime of the approaching fall local rock crop.
  •   BAND OF OUTSIDERS  |  September 09, 2009
    The Beatings got back from their eighth US tour the day before, but they’re already reconvening over at frontman Eldridge Rodriguez’s misplaced little two-story beach house in Lower Allston. I do a double take on the way through the cute picket fence.
  •   DELAYED GRATIFICATION  |  September 02, 2009
    "It's the most bizarre, perverse thing," admits guitarist Greg Edwards over the phone from LA. "I don't understand why people haven't abandoned us completely."

 See all articles by: MATT PARISH

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