Moneyfire

Reap What You Sow ~Converge

Number 2 of 2009: Axe to Fall ~Converge

(Full Disclosure: Growing up in the greater Boston punk scene during the late mid to late 90’s Converge played a formative role in my initiation into the scene, even while I was getting fairly blindered by the formulaic tendencies of street punk they did a lot to keep my eyes open to other more sophisticated notions of what punk could be. All of which is to say I am totally in the bag for them)

It’s tough to really go through all the things I love about this album, so two thoughts/observations. Coming on the heels of No Heroes (perhaps the weakest Converge LP) this album sort of represents a reboot for them. Looking at Jane Doe as a crossroads in their sound the You Fail Me/No Heroes strain seems to have hit its terminus and what they have done with Axe to Fall is to return to the other half of their sound on Jane Doe and develop that more fully. Having exhausted the ethereal aspects of their longer arraignments Converge seem to have returned to the more punishing aspects of Jane Doe. Returning to their purported masterwork, Converge have fully embraced the brutal aspect that provided so much of the tension as their sound expanded and have made a record that develops those raw tendencies.

In various places I’ve heard the album get bagged on for being “just a bunch of d-beat.”  I grew up listening to a lot of the early d-beat bands (Discharge first and foremost) and if I were not familiar with the songs themselves I couldn’t differentiate between bands much less songs. D-beat as it has developed in the punk world has certainly been hurt by a lack of ambition and in toto has failed to really evolve. This album is more than d-beat.  Axe to Fall ebbs and flows as a proper LP should and while there is a fair bit of d-beat, their use of it is far more ambitious than the charges would have you believe. To say this album is “just d-beat” is to say being a sculptor is just about hammering stone.

I could keep going but I’ll stop. In summary, Converge continues to amaze me, over a decade as a band and they’re still willing to throw a spanner in the works and put out something totally different. Axe to Fall is one of their best albums and certainly deserves all of the praise its been getting.

Battlestations ~Fight Like Apes

Number 3 of 2009: …Golden Medallion ~Fight Like Apes

There is a serious problem with U.S. bands trying to do the synth thing, they just aren’t getting any better. Sure some good albums have come out and there are some fun bands to see live but overall the genre seems to be 75% of everything plus some other influence which is supposed to make them unique/new/edgy. Fuck that shit. It’s all well and good but after 20-30 spins I’m more or less done with an album. I’ve used this analogy before but it really seems like 98.5% of bands that more or less end up lumped within the genre are bubblegum: great at first, chew it obsessively, quickly losses its taste and then totally spent. I love these albums for a month but I’m not coming back to them.

Dublin’s Fight Like Apes turn that shit on its ear (I feel bad lumping Fight Likes Apes in with the synthpop crew but as I try to get friends to listen, it seems to be the easiest genre inroad, illustrating the frustrating nature of subgenre, more often time limiting but labeling does retain some useful value in taxonomy). More than adept with their hooks, they’ve written some seriously catchy james. However they are far, far more than their hooks. MayKay perfectly alternates her sweet and saccharine with sharp tongued vocals with her hard edged lyrical stylings lending a snide knowingness and depth to the music. The McLusky comps are of course fair and the band does a great job mixing in the influence, while repurposing it for their own ends. Hey, they even write lyrics that are worth a damn. In sum, they play emotion and reality deftly off each other and use their pop hook bounce and postpunk edge to similar effect.  I could go into far more depth with the FLApes album but I’m trying to keep this brief; perhaps the best way to sum up the album is that the first 4 songs are better than anything else released by any “similar” band this year but those are not their best work. The magnum opus of the album is “Battlestations.” I could write a post about that song, so this won’t do it justice but briefly it is the best example of songwriting on the album and in its scope feels far closer to a 5 minute track than its humble 3:30is run time, its the sort of track that makes you embarrass yourself on the morning commute. Now they just need to play the US, seriously what the fuck is up with that?