Psyopus‘ 2004 debut album Ideas of Reference is an in depth study in regression. Contrary to other technical metal albums released in 2004 (Dillinger Escape Plan‘s Miss Machine, Pig Destroyer‘s Terrifyer, as well as less-tech Converge and Mastodon with You Fail Me and Leviathan respectively) which, in one way or another, were more progressive and dynamic, and begged the listener to gape in awe of their massive scope and depth and be terrified of the monstrous wall of impenetrable sound they created; Psyopus ripped open a black hole.

Beginning with the vacuum that is “Mork and Mindy (Daydream Lover)” and through all 9 songs that comprise Ideas of Reference, Psyopus make void, as opposed to leaving behind destruction and dead bodies, erasing what each previous section was building with the one that would follow; breaking it down into small parts and examining each for fitness.

While their complexity at first listen seems like random, mashed together parts, each song is an actual song which was a serious anomaly in the aftermath of the “breakdown-core” and “part-core” bands in the early part of the Aughts. The songs contain repetition, unity of key centers, rhythmic and melodic repetition and variation, inversion; like Stravinsky at his more chaotic moments, Psyopus is full of Ideas and fleshes each out nicely in the 9 tracks.

From blast beats to syncopated grooves, to punctuated rhythms that require a calculator or a slide rule to count, Psyopus’ beats are in their second semester of calculus in the school of mathcore bands. But the drums do not build in complexity so much as they work through current problems, rhythmically tearing the song apart as it plays. The melodic instrumentalists move in similar fashion. The guitar and bass are both working out problems of their own, often intersecting, than chasing down separate strands only to intersect again but inverted. Often too bass and drums relegate themselves to the background so the guitar can explore variables only it is fast enough and small enough to fit into. You see this throughout Ideas. Despite the proficiency of Psyopus bassist and drummer, it’s obvious that the guitarist is the real Einstein of the group.

Psyopus’ guitarist Christopher Arp is a quadruple armed, eight fingered mammoth handed man whose fingers can stretch 12 frets and his pinky can move independently of his ring finger. He is the love child of Dillinger Escape Plan‘s Ben Weinman and Morbid Angel‘s Trey Azagthoth that was conceived while on methamphetamine. Arp’s guitar playing is faster than imagination on Ideas and is at times chaotic and discordant, moving minor 2nd notes up and down the neck, to jazzy and progressive playing 9th, 11th, 13th and 211th chords but it is never stagnant. His secret weapon is placing both hands on the fret board and playing two set of melodic lines at the same time sounding as though a second guitarist is present. Do not be mistaken, he is one and he really can play that fast. It is that speed and two-handed technique that give Psyopus such a distinct, almost obsessive compulsive sound. Their minds seems to justify the notion that playing every note possible, as quickly as possible, is the only way to keep the demons away. And if challenging Psyopus is anything like how Charlie Daniels says it is, the demons would do good to stay away.

Pysopus’ Ideas of Reference is an escape, an exercise in reversal, an attempt to erase. With each step forward the band creates backwards momentum, and moving backwards is the future.

I’ve made the EP available online here: http://stlpilots.bandcamp.com/. You can download it for free in many formats including high quality mp3s, FLAC and others. I’ll be uploading our 2008 three song, and the final full length once it’s finished. So keep an eye out.

im going to also start ascribing a #howfire level to these #nwms records on a scale of Jane Doe (10) to #crabcore (-10) #nwms

Behemoth’s #howfire score is a 6 #nwms

Hatebreed’s “Perseverence” 2.5/5 Middle of the road moshcore, sounds like most NY hardcore #howfire: 3 #nwms

Lamb of God’s “New American Gospel” 2.5/5 LoG paved modern metalcore highway but not down with vox. Brutal as Rambo #howfire: 7 #nwms

In Flames’ “Clayman” 4/5 Swedish melodic death metal, beginning of “gothenburg” sound #howfire: 4 #nwms

Lamb of God + In Flames = Killswitch Engage (& the rest of the melodic metalcore 2001 scene) #nwms

Sunn O)))’s “Monoliths & Dimensions 4/5 Druid music enveloped in fog & pre-dawn light. Heavy & bowel shakingly sub-bass low #howfire: 6 #nwms

Nachtmystium’s “Assassins…” 4.5/5 Incredibly diverse black/death/prog metal with riffs! & choruses! & guitar solos! wee! #howfire: 5 #nwms

Big Business’ “Here Comes the Waterworks” 3/5 Jim Ward (Sparta) & Troy Sanders’ (Mastodon) lovechild play Sabbath covers #howfire: 1 #nwms

Marduk’s “Wormwood” 1.5/5 Couldn’t finish. It’s too kvlt maybe. Trvly boring. Gruesome vox though. #howfire: 4 #nwms

Church of Misery’s “Houses of the Unholy” 3.5/5 Rockin’ 7 min. blues-based hardcore. makes me wanna bleach my tips #howfire: 3 #nwms

1.) “Just Do It” by Breather Resist from Only in the Morning.
2.) “Suicide Soundtrack” by Scarlet from Cult Classic.
3.) “Framce” by Botch from An Anthology of Dead Ends.
4.) “Gleamer” by Intronaut from Void.
5.) “There Will Be No More Scum” by Frodus from And We Washed Our Weapons in the Sea.
6.) “The Deadly Rhythm” by Refused from The Shape of Punk to Come.
7.) “Gift” by Old Man Gloom from Christmas.
8.) “Eagles Become Vultures” by Converge from You Fail Me.
9.) “Guignol Serene” by Trap Them from Seizures in Barren Praise.
10.) “Go Ape” by Spitfire from Self-Help.
11.) “Hexagram” by the Deftones from their self-titled LP.
12.) “I Hate Almost Every Person I Come In Contact With” by Curl Up and Die from We May Be Through With the Past… EP.
13.) “43% Burnt” by the Dillinger Escape Plan from Calculating Infinity.
14.) “Mirrorf***** ” by Young Widows from Settle Down City.
15.) “January 1979″ by mewithoutYou from Catch For Us the Foxes.
16.) “D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.” by Modern Life is War from Witness.
17.) “Cayman Tongue” by Cave In from their brand new EP Planets of Old.

Overall I’m pretty satisfied. For my taste in hardcore and metal it was pretty difficult to get the mix to breath a little and not have every song hit like a sledgehammer. I also included a few cuts that I hoped my intended audience would enjoy since he’s not entirely “into” hardcore. The Frodus song and the mewithoutYou song I might have saved for a different mix, but they definitely helped keep things more varied.

Anyone making any mixes lately?

Converge Paper for Rock Music History
Prof. Andrea Johnson
May 5th, 2005

Converge is arguable one of the most important hardcore bands since Black Flag, Minor Threat, Agnostic Front and Sick of It All.  Converge, along with a few other bands in the early nineties, pioneered the metalcore subgenre of hardcore.  Their last two critically acclaimed releases, Jane Doe and You Fail Me, set Converge apart from an increasingly amalgamating hardcore and metal scene that is filled with uninteresting and unoriginal copycat artists.

Converge was formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1990 by founders Jacob Bannon, vocalist, and Kurt Ballou, guitarist (the line-up currently is filled out by bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller.)   They started out performing covers of their favorite metal and punk songs but quickly wrote their own material and recorded several demos.  They were signed to the indie record label Hydrahead in 1996 and released their first full-length album “Halo in a Haystack.”  Both “Halo” and their second album “Caring and Killing” were thrashy, youthful, punk influenced hardcore that exemplified the band’s chaotic energy and was a very good sign of what was to come next.

Converge’s following two albums “Petitioning the Empty Sky” (1997) and “When Forever Comes Crashing” (1998) set the benchmark for metallic hardcore that many bands still follow to this day.  Jacob Bannon’s introspective and emotionally charged lyrics are like a poetic outpour of his heart added only more weight to his caustic, throat-searing vocals.  The albums allowed Converge to stay “ahead of a hardcore scene now dominated by uninspired mosh-metal while perfectly reflecting hardcore’s upcoming twists and turns, in the process dictating a number of them” (Punkinsider, par. 6).

Around the same time as “Petitioning” and “Forever,” vocalist Jacob Bannon completed art school for graphic design and started doing album artwork for many bands including Converge, Cave In, Poison the Well and American Nightmare (Give Up the Ghost) among others.    Bannon’s father was a painter who sold his work to help pay the bills and put food on the table.  It was his father’s work that influenced Bannon to create artwork to begin with.  He has a whole philosophy of combining both the aural and the visual arts into a whole experience.  “Music is a kinetic and primal thing for me, where visual art’s power lies in its subtle narrative and composition. Marrying the two approaches has always been a goal and motivational factor for me” (Wonka Vision, par. 5).

After “Forever” Converge released two split EPs that pushed the band to the complicated extremes of technical metal preparing the legions of hardcore enthusiasts for an album that would change the face of hardcore, metal and punk unlike Refused’s “The Shape of Punk to Come” ever did.  The haunting concept album about despair and loss, Jane Doe was released by Equal Vision Records in 2001, with a 28-page booklet of artwork by Bannon, and received acclaim from critic and consumer a like.  The album topped nearly every hardcore magazines “album of the year” charts as well gave Converge commercial recognition.  Jane Doe is a cathartic journey in twelve steps that delve deep into Bannon’s soul revealing the pain and suffering of a failed relationship of five years.  Musically, the album is relentlessly heavy and some of the most technical work Converge has ever done but still carrying emotional weight and dynamics.  Converge reached a level more intense, more harsh, more painful and more full of life then any of their previous efforts.

2002 saw many doors open for Converge as they headlined many tours across the US, Europe, Canada and Japan and played nearly every major hardcore/metal festival among such legendary acts as Slayer, Hatebreed and Motörhead.  In 2003, Converge released the huge “The Long Road Home” DVD that was filled with five years of live performances as well as three whole live sets and a music video for the song “Downpour.”  Converge also released an album of rarities and previously unreleased demos called “Unloved and Weeded Out” to give back to the underground hardcore community that had given so much to them by presenting music back from their roots.

The following year Converge entered the studio to record their fifth and most recent album “You Fail Me.”  The follow-up to the seminal “Jane Doe” had very high expectations to meet.  “You Fail Me,” like “Jane Doe,” is also a concept album.  For Jacob Bannon, “Jane Doe” was a purging that he hoped would bring a sense of closure to the ending of his five year relationship.  “In the end, I didn’t feel any better—there was no clarity in it for me.”  “You Fail Me” picks up where “Jane Doe” left off lyrically about several subjects including loss, failure and how to cope with it.  Bannon says that “these are our songs of failure—how we fail each other and ourselves. It’s about standing up and taking responsibility… It’s about putting the practice of living in front of the act of dying every day. It’s about surviving” (Skratch, par. 6).

“You Fail Me” was produced by Converge’s guitarist Kurt Ballou at his Godcity recording studios as well as Magpie, and Witch Doctor studios.  Musically, Converge treads new ground they had not attempted on previous albums including the sparse, western-styled guitar intro “First Light” and the acoustic song in the middle of the album “In Her Shadow.”  Past Converge albums have been consistently pedal-to-the-metal, full-on volume, 100% intensity and Converge’s approach to “You Fail Me” was to hold back.  “It kind of was because you get four dudes with ADD together and put them in a room and give them guitars, they’re just going to try to go nuts all the time. Especially in a band like Converge where that’s what we’ve done for a long time, it was an experiment to see what we could keep ourselves from doing” (Bassplayer, par. 2).  What “You Fail Me” is instead of being an all out riffing contest is a solid, well defined, emotional roller coaster of an album that is united more so in its simplicity then its complexity.   “We just wanted to write cohesive songs and in order to do that, we realized we needed to [calm down] a little bit. By the same token, I think this record is equally, if not more, intense than ‘Jane Doe’ is because I think it’s a lot more to the point than ‘Jane Doe’” (Bassplayer, par. 2).

“You Fail Me” is a return to Converge’s roots of punk just as much as it is a progression.  “Black Cloud,” “Drop Out,” “Heartless” and “Death King” among others are very similar to Converge’s earlier albums and very punk influenced.  While “Last Light,” “You Fail Me” and the ending of “Eagles Become Vultures” is an entirely new development of what I like to call “epic” hardcore.

Specifically now I will focus on the examination of “First Light” and “Last Light.”  “First Light” is an intro track of one minute in length that proceeds right into “Last Light” so I feel the two songs are really meant to be one.

“First Light” is in G minor.  There is no specific meter and has a sparse and ambient feel to the song.  It begins with a slight feedback swell and a single guitar soaked in reverb with overdrive.  The intro sets the mood for the album as well as sets up the main harmonic idea for “Last Light.”

The responsive “Last Light” opens with the full band, the guitars are rising from a G to a C, and then an F to a G# while the drums keep the beat unsteady by playing a continually roll on the snare and toms.  The vocals entire right away with a more understandable yell rather than all out screaming.  The lyrics are talking about how we need each other to be strong amidst all our struggles and hurts even when it does not make sense or does not mean anything to continue on.  The main progression is played twice and a D diminished power chords is repeated twice before repeating the A section again with more intensity and fuller chord sonorities.  The D diminished chord is repeated exactly as before which bridges “Last Light” into a recapitulation of the chord progression from “First Light.”

This time through the chord progression the drums and bass accompany the guitar.  The second time through, the vocals enter and the guitar backs off and plays simpler to leave room for the vocals and the drum rolls.  After this section the guitar applies a phaser effect to exemplify the intensity of the words “Keep breathing, keep fighting, keep searching, keep pushing on” that the vocalist is now screaming instead of yelling like he has up until this point in the song.  The added intensity and dynamic level in the instruments and vocals emphasize the intensity of the struggle that the vocalist is urging us to keeping fighting through.

After the screamed section the vocals cut out but the instruments continue the same progression one more time through and then drop out to a single palm-muted guitar playing the same chords but with less strums.  The drums crescendo during this section to what in hardcore is called the “breakdown” (which is usually a groove based drum beat over a distinctive repeated rhythm in the guitar and bass) at the end of the song.  Before reaching the climax, the vocals crescendo on the line “This is for the heart’s still beating” and repeats “beating” two times before the breakdown commences.

The D diminished chord from our first chord progression is brought back here and repeated in a series of two, four and six quarter notes with a slightly less than quarter note pause between each repetition.  This motive is repeated 6 times and ends with just two quarter note hits on the same chord.  The drums during this section will build into a beat for hits two and four but then accent the six hits of the last part of the motive.  There are no vocals here which lead me to believe that the rhythmic ending is a response to the lyric “this is for the heart’s still beating.”  That line is about how we are all responsible for helping each other through our struggles and failures.  Our efforts are for all the heart’s still beating.  The violent and unsteady nature of the ending breakdown exemplifies that helping out our fellow man is not easy and could be a very painful task.

Converge, in my opinion, is one the most innovative and original hardcore bands I have ever heard.  Having loved there music since they day I first heard “Thaw” from “Jane Doe” I now appreciate them so much more after learning about their beginnings and how strongly they feel about the underground hardcore scene and staying true to that.  Converge is a band that I truly respect for who they are as individuals as well as for their honest and emotional music.

Bibliography

Magazines/Journal Articles

Childers, Oakland L.  Converge – singer Jacob Bannon – Brief Article – Interview.  Thrasher Magazine.  May, 2002.

<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSE/is_2002_May/ai_84668842>

Gordon, Bill.  A Careful Balance of the Personal and the Professional: an Interview with Jacob Bannon.  Wonka Vision Magazine.  Retrieved May 4, 2005.

<http://www.wonkavisionmagazine.com/jacobbannoninterview.htm>

Websites

Bassplayer.com.  Nate Newton of Converge.  Epitaph Records.  Retrieved May 4, 2005.  <http://www.epitaph.com/news/article.php?id=2103>

Gramlich, Chris.  Converge: Innovation Through Suffering.  August 30, 2001.  Retrieved May 4, 2005.

<http://www.exclaim.ca/index.asp?layid=22&csid=1&csid1=779>

Converge.  Biography.  Loudside.  Retrieved May 4, 2005.  <http://www.loudside.com/bands/?bandID=300#BIOGRAPHY>

Punkinsider.  Converge.  Biography.  Punkinsider.  2005.  Retrieved May 4, 2005.

<http://www.punkinsider.com/main.php?page=band&band=Converge>

Roeschlein, Shane.  You Fail Me. Review.  The Music Edge.  Retrieved May 4, 2005.

<http://www.themusicedge.com/moxie/news/reviews/converge.shtml>

Schwegler, Andy.  Converge This: Interview with Jacob Bannon of Converge.  Schwegweb.  Retrieved May 4, 2005.

<http://www.schwegweb.com/features/feat_converge.html>

Appendices

Lyrics “Last Light”

I need you to be the strength of widows and soul survivors
I need you to be as fearless as new mothers and new fathers
I need you to be the hope of heart’s who lost true love
I need you to be the might of their first kiss
I need a purpose and I need a reason
I need to know that there is trophy and meaning
To all that we lose and all we fight for
To all our loves and our wars
Keep breathing
Keep living
Keep searching
Keep pushing on
Keep bleeding
Keep healing
Keep fading
Keep shining on
This is for the hearts still beating