Album Review: Converge-All We Love We Leave Behind

Massachusetts's resident musical spazzes Converge have been challenging, perplexing, and dividing audiences for almost twenty years now. At the same time they have been splitting audiences down the middle, they have picked up heaps of critical praise and a cult following. On their eighth full-length, All We Love We Leave Behind, Converge has struck gold again with another complex and sure to be polarizing record.

All We Love We Leave Behind is the most accessible and easy-to-digest Converge record to date, but don't take that as a sign that Converge is selling out because that couldn't be further from the truth. They are are as chaotic and frenzied as ever, there's just a little more calm in between the many storms this album offers up. I will say releasing "Aimless Arrow" as a single and having it open the album was kind of a mistake. The Touche Amore/Title Fight vibe sends the wrong idea about the record and it really doesn't fit as an opener at all. On top of being an ineffective opener, the track just did nothing for me in general. The music is good and I like the explosion at the very end, but the rest of the song just fell kind of flat for me (Sorry Jake Bannon, I just don't like your clean vocals). After "Aimless Arrow" though, This album hits it's stride and never looks back. Converge goes full throttle into face-melters "Trespasses" and "Tender Abuse". This is the Converge that I love: Unpredictable, chaotic, changing riffs every 5-10 seconds, and filled with an unfathomable amount of fury. You just have to step back and try to process what you just heard and that is the main reason Converge can be so special to some listeners and so infuriating to others. The song that really stood out to me not only on the first half of the album, but the entire album was "Sadness Comes Home". It shifts back and forth between their spoken word, experimental side to their bat-shit crazy side on a whim and it works beautifully. It's essentially to this album what "Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast" was to Axe to Fall except even better. The second half of the album is just as strong as the first with plenty of fast tracks ("Vicious Muse", "Veins and Veils", "Shame in the Way" balanced out with the slower, more experimental ones ("All We Love We Leave Behind", "Coral Blue", "Glacial Place"). Converge has the perfect mix of fast and slow(er) songs and managed to open up to more experimentation with losing an ounce of intensity.

All We Love We Leave Behind is another knockout punch for Converge. They branched out a little bit and embraced some post-hardcore influences, but this is still the Converge that their fans have known and loved for the past eighteen years. These dudes have been crafting album after album with incredible consistency and they haven't even begun to show any loss of creativity or quality in their music. There is no shortage of amazing riffs from Kurt Ballou (not to mention amazing, crisp production, he's still one of the best producers in all of music), frenzied screams from Jake Bannon, and musical diversity from the entire band. Converge is still as manic and creative as ever and with the long and beyond impressive career they've had thus far, I doubt that All We Love We Leave Behind will be the last time that Converge impresses me.

4/5 Stars
Standout Tracks
1.Sadness Comes Home
2.Trespasses
3.Veins and Veils