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Riot Acts
Converge bring the noise back home to Allston
BY J. BENNETT

The ICC Church in Allston, July 2004. Several hundred kids are packed into a musty house of worship. No pews, no chairs, just a swirling mass of bodies. It’s hotter than slavery in here — and twice as humid. On stage, three dudes from Witch City (and one from Allston) writhe like marionettes. Singer Jake Bannon is covered from neck to navel in elaborate tattoos, and he has a mike cord wrapped around his neck. He’s not even using the mike. He doesn’t have to: all the kids are screaming the words for him. Bassist Nate Newton is slick with sweat. His eyes roll back in his head as he pilots a low end that threatens to rupture eardrums. Guitarist Kurt Ballou whips his guitar around on its strap and produces sounds that fly around the room like cluster bombs. From reverb clang to sciatic chug, his guitar is the gravid nucleus that Converge revolve around and are flung from. Drummer Ben Koller, shirtless in cut-off jeans and checkered Vans, seems to be fending off Time itself, his knees pinning its chest to the floor, daring it to breathe. It’s anarchy, cacophony, and scattershot aggression, a physical and emotional bloodletting. Bodies fly through the air. Ballou lurches into the opening riff from "Jane Doe," the title track from Converge’s vertiginous 2001 album on Equal Vision, while Bannon flails, all acrid bile and scathing black nihilism, whipping the band’s pie-eyed disciples into a frothing war frenzy with an almost messianic fervor. In the middle of the song, Bannon squats at the front of the stage and vomits. The band play on.

That’s a pretty typical show for Converge, who return to Boston to play an all-ages matinee at Harpers Ferry this Saturday. At a recent show in Leipzig, Ballou hit Bannon in the face with his guitar. "We were doing our thing," Newton explains via e-mail from France, the latest stop on Converge’s European tour. "Kurt got a little overzealous with his guitar and decided to throw it behind him, not realizing Jake was standing there. To make a long story short, I heard a loud ‘bonk,’ and then I saw Jake lying on the stage with blood all over his face. Six stitches later, we were back on the road the next day. We’ve all been to the hospital numerous times for this band."

Converge’s return to Allston will include sets by Swedish death-rockers Nine, the recently reunited Philly hardcore commandos Turmoil, and Newton’s self-explanatory side project Doomriders. To call this homecoming "triumphant" would be an understatement. Released on Epitaph in late September, Converge’s latest album, You Fail Me, has been hailed as a noise-metal masterpiece, and the band, still a New England staple after almost 15 years, have seen their fame spread. "Epitaph has afforded us the luxury of having our records more readily available for people," Newton offers modestly. "On our last few tours, I definitely noticed people at our shows who are not into hardcore per se — which is kind of interesting to me. It seems like maybe people are starved for music that is honest and uncorrupted by the music industry."

Equal Vision, meanwhile, has reissued two linchpins from the band’s back catalogue — 1997’s Petitioning the Empty Sky and 1998’s When Forever Comes Crashing. With bonus tracks, video enhancements, and new artwork by Hydra Head honcho/Isis frontman Aaron Turner, these discs attest to the success of a band who are more concerned with what hardcore music can be than what message-board warriors think it should be. Forsaking conventional song structures, standard time signatures, and even the traditional notion of "riffs," Converge have long since transcended genre. This all makes sense when you witness it for yourself.

"I remember reading Get in the Van by [Henry] Rollins when I was a teenager and being really inspired by something Chuck Dukowski said to Rollins on his first tour with Black Flag," Newton writes. "It was something along the lines of, ‘It doesn’t matter if there are two people or 200 people at a show — you always give it everything you’ve got or you don’t do it at all.’ I probably got that quote completely wrong, but the bottom line is, I won’t do this when I stop giving a hundred percent. When the energy and inspiration are gone, Converge is over."

Converge, Turmoil, Doom Riders, and Nine perform this Saturday, April 16, at a 1:30 p.m. all-ages show at Harpers Ferry, 158 Brighton Avenue in Allston; call (617) 254-9743.


Issue Date: April 15 - 21, 2005
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