'Autumn' Joy

Autumn has always been a time of great change for me. Getting situated at school each semester can be a bit of a struggle for anyone, but enjoyable nonetheless. It’s always been comforting to know that as I get into the grind of schoolwork and step away from my energetic summer-self, so does Mother Earth. Green leaves seem to slowly burst into enigmatic and vibrant infernos that fall to the ground and crunch under foot. 

Squirrels can be seen gathering nuts for winter, geese fly south and each morning feels a tad crisper than the week before. Pumpkins are gathered, emptied, eaten and carved, soon to be followed by a torrent of monsters, ghouls, fairies and fiends; young and old alike, all searching to satisfy a certain sweet tooth.  By November, the last wisp of lingering summer air has disappeared until spring and the world seems to slow down. Midterms are finished, beards are grown and turkeys are on the run.  And as the nights get colder and snow lingers on the horizon, we sit and wait for winter, brew some hot cocoa and CRANK UP THE METAL!!!

Metal may not be a universally-accepted genre of music. In fact, I’m positive it’s not. But something about November has always made me search out that which surpasses the pain threshold of my eardrums. Maybe it’s the no-shave-November attitude that yearns for a primal self. Maybe it’s because the indie-folk genre has become tiring to listen to over the months of September and October. Or maybe it’s a feeble attempt to balance out the sudden shift to nature’s inactivity. Whatever the case, this November has led me to a cornucopia of noise, a hardcore punk/extreme metal/mathcore band, hailing from Salem, Mass., who understand exactly how I feel as winter quickly creeps in.  They call themselves “mathcore” because of their precisely calculated, ‘formulated chaos’ approach to metal, resulting in primordial rage known as metalcore. They call themselves Converge, and their latest album, Axe to Fall, has been like an intravenous drip of metal vitality for the entirety of these first weeks of November.

I heard about Converge in the spring of my senior year of high school and a group that was openly mocked by all my friends who went to their concert. Critics described lead singer Jacob Bannon’s vocals as “a dog barking through a distortion pedal.” The hearsay surrounding Converge always led me to believe they were “too heavy to handle,” as my taste in metal has always been pretty selective.

Fast forward almost three years and one of my best friends from home planned to see Mastodon and Dethklok at the House of Blues in Boston a show that would (again) be opened up by Converge and High on Fire.  I had a ticket and I could have gone, but the scholar within me couldn’t afford to miss two days of classes and drive down to Boston.  Having already heard everything there is to be heard from Mastodon and Dethklok, I decided the best thing to compensate for the missed show would be to pick up a new metal album.  I went with Converge’s previously mentioned Axe to Fall, which has surprisingly good reviews on Metacritic, a Web site that collects reviews from all over the world for music, movies, games, and television. On a whim, I picked it up from Amazon.com.

In short, Axe to Fall is one of the hardest albums I have ever heard.  But what will surprise most, and is the key factor I have come to love about this album, is it’s accessibility to anyone with an appreciation for prog-rock, hard-rock and heavy-metal.  The shredding skills and unsurpassable drumming skills of the group are so hard to ignore that Bannon’s vocals suddenly don’t seem so harsh. These guys have an incredibly specific aesthetic, which is why they’ve come to be hailed as a rudimentary (if not the fundamental) group of metalcore. The fact that the group chose to slow down and lighten up on a few tracks certainly doesn’t harm their credibility either.

If you want to test your openness to metal, or if you’re already a fan of Converge (which you undoubtedly are if you’ve heard their album Jane Doe), pick up Axe to Fall.  Perhaps as the days shorten and the weather gets colder this blazing piece of metalcore will add some spice to your life.  Though, for the more feeble-eared listeners out there who still want that spice, stick to apple cider and The Antlers.

Kevin Malicki can be contacted at kmalicki@keeneequinox.com.