CONVERGE (MA, USA) - The Dusk In Us (2017) (sealed Digipak CD) includes 28-page booklet featuring extensive artwork from CONVERGE vocalist/lyricist Jacob Bannon. The ninth full-length studio album from the Metallic Hardcore architects is sharp and urgent. The band's songwriting shines as they turn their back on interpersonal torment to face something bigger and more existential.
Throughout these 13 songs, many of them the best the band has ever written, CONVERGE collectively recognize that the real enemies are bigger, the problems more existential. The invocation of nuclear war is telling, but it’s merely a start. Bannon inveighs against police brutality and senseless violence, hereditary madness and original sin, firearm obsession and feudal overreach. He’s moved beyond bickers and betrayals as his reasons for fisticuffs, taking up the issues that threaten not just him but the child or lover he seems to address during “A Single Tear,” the record’s opener and linchpin. He has, he admits, finally found a reason to fight the good fight.
And if Bannon’s lyrics reflect a quest for personal growth and self-preservation in a world that feels ever more fractious, Converge has offered a musical roadmap for as much for decades. They’ve constantly refined their core—a jagged mix of hardcore power and death metal kinetics—while spreading and evolving their sound, too. They’ve added ghoulish dirges, scabrous noise-rock, and bona fide pop hooks. All of that is here on The Dusk in Us, from Ballou’s feedback squall throughout “Murk & Marrow” and Nate Newton’s blunderbuss bassline at the center of “Trigger” to Ben Koller’s start-stop-and-sprint drumming during “I Can Tell You About Pain.” As sharp, urgent, and exploratory as they’ve ever been, The Dusk in Us is quintessential Converge, given the grand new purpose of salvation. Epitaph – 87541-2
1_edited_p.png)
