Thanks for all the endorsements on 'Dirt'. Here's a completely different album, one that's much darker, even though it sounds brighter. An album with very poetic, albeit mostly unintelligible lyrics. The ultimate break-up record, the fantastic:
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37. Converge – Jane Doe (2001) Here’s a little secret that I probably shouldn’t be too proud of considering this albums placement in my top 50: the total amount of times that I have listened to this album in full, front to back, is probably less than ten. That is considerably less than all other albums on this list. The reason for this is mainly that it’s basically too much for me to handle. I think this is by far the most heavy album on the entire list and the most exhaustive one to get through. That said, I do not think I really need another album like this either, one is more than enough.
So, what is this then? ‘Jane Doe’ is the apparent masterpiece of post-hardcore/mathcore band Converge. Stating that feels rather weird, considering I can’t judge whether that is true, for I have no comparison material, but I’ll just assume it as it is. As stated, this album is heavy, and very much so, but it’s not heavy in a sense that it’s full of muddied guitars that play sort-of heavy riffs (‘Holy Mountain’ by the band Sleep comes to mind as an album that tries to be heavy, but fails in my opinion, even though it definitely grooves). In fact, this album sounds a lot ‘tinnier’, for lack of a better word, than a lot of other metal albums. The strangely titled
Heaven in her Arms is a great example of that, containing riffs that would be mixed very differently were they played by a different band.
Partly the music this band plays adds a lot to this sound, the riffs they play are actually very technical and intricate and provide the perfect backdrop for the (often distorted) screeching vocals. Those vocals aren’t even layered on top of the instrumentation, but fit in perfectly with the angry guitars and drums. It’s almost as if vocalist Jacob Bannon does not consider his vocals to be above the instruments, but as an instrument in itself. The album opener, the blisteringly fast
Concucine, is a great example of that.
To say that this album is heavy all the way through would be wrong, the album has relative ‘soft-spots’, with the verses of
Distance and Meaning, the brooding and groovy
Hell to Pay, the entire rather laid-back
Phoenix in Flight and large parts of the album’s title-track and album closer
Jane Doe. ‘Jane Doe’ (the album) mixes different aspects and different interpretations of pure musical anger into a very cohesive whole. One that could definitely be too much to handle at first – and granted, I can not listen to this album all the time – but it’s a perfect album to blow off some steam with.
Favourite song: Jane Doe
Other songs worth checking out: Thaw, Concubine, Phoenix in Flight
Other stuff by this band: Another secret; due to the nature of this band’s music and my satisfaction of already having one album like this, I never really gave any of their other albums a chance, apart from the odd song here or there, so I can’t really comment on this one.