I Knew CONVERGE Was Heavy...But Not THIS Heavy

[00:00:00]Welcome back to Lowend University. I'm excited to hear more Converge today because, as I mentioned in my last Converge video not too long ago, they were always a band name I saw on tour posters with some of my actual favorite bands. Converge might be one day, I don't know, but bands I knew. But I never really got around to properly checking them out, really listening to anything at all. I just always knew they were some kind of heavy band. And today kicks off a new chapter on the channel, or well, the Patreon technically. I launched a super limited tier called the Deans List where members get to straight up choose a few YouTube episodes for the channel each year. And our first Deans List pick is today. It's Converg's song, The Saddest Day, which is from the band's second studio album, Petitioning the Empty Sky, released in 1996. I'm never mad at 7 minute songs. Always Quite the Journey. Let's check it out.

[00:00:55]Oh man.

[00:01:05]All right, 7 minutes. Let's jump back into it. Oop, I'm on the volume button.

[00:01:10]That's heavy. I love heavy stuff.

[00:01:12]All right, where are we?

[00:01:15]Heat.

[00:01:26]Heat.

[00:01:42]Yeah. Okay.

[00:01:47]Man, it's so intense. And the craziest thing about this type of hardcore stuff is that again, I I probably saw this band touring with Between the Buried Me, Protest the Hero, was it Periphery? Was it any of those bands like the more modern progressive metal bands? I do know. I feel like I saw Converge touring with them or doing something with them again. So, I knew this is probably the way they would sound. But the the market difference here is that this sounds so like unhinged where a band like BT Bam between the Buried Me for example.

[00:02:20]you could probably go from that track to one of theirs and it feels similar. But BT Bam has like a whole different calculated type of I don't know, academia to the riffs, whereas the hardcore thing always just feels really unhinged and less about what what's actually being played and more about the feeling it might give you this unsettling thing. And this kind of like overlaps with what I like about death metal. It's not notes and rhythms.

[00:02:42]There's like a feeling kind of makes you kind of kind of do this like it's making me. So, it's like a new flavor of something I already like. And to figure this out, it's going to be tough. It's so fast. It's so crazy. Uh, I'm going to try to listen for anything stand out in the bass department, but I think they're down in D. And if I remember the last conversion episode, it was actually on um was it on KXP or Audio Tree? I think it was Audio Tree. They were tuned down to C or D. So, I know they're tuned down. I'll figure it out eventually and I might tune down, but let's just let's just go back to the I know it's 7 minutes, but I'm just going to let it go for a minute now that I've kind of said my first impressions of I guess what I'm thinking.

[00:03:31]That's cool.

[00:03:41]Crazy to think this was 96. This has a really good production for what it is.

[00:04:01]A half step thing.

[00:04:23]That an actual tempo change. I said I wasn't going to stop too soon, but If it's not, I don't know what it would be. A whole like modulation of this triplet thing.

[00:04:49]There could be more going on under the hood there than just a tempo change.

[00:04:56]Boom. Bass and drums doing that together.

[00:05:04]really down here on D.

[00:05:15]>> Lots of those like inverted these kind of chords. So 151 power chord, which you do like 141 and it still is an inversion with it's still technically a D chord just um fifth inversion of basically this. You can go higher. So it sounds like that's the voicing this you get that really chuggy that kind of sound.

[00:05:44]all this stuff, whatever it is.

[00:05:58]Yeah, these tempos are interesting.

[00:06:19]It's almost in this swung shuffle thing now. And I can't tell if it's some sort of where the triplet, the dotted quarter note has the beat now. So it's a similar tempo, but it kind of feels like they're just pushing and pulling in an unsettling way. Like it does not I'm I'm typically not good at these sort of rhythmic tempo things. much better with chords and pitch and such. But you get going on something and you realize it's kind of outrun you. This kind of slow gradual tempo change here.

[00:06:53]See, I'm here.

[00:06:59]You're like, "Oh, it's it's getting away from me.

[00:07:13]Wow.

[00:07:22]Oh man.

[00:07:24]This must be the breakdown.

[00:07:32]Ooh.

[00:07:33]Okay. Suddenly things got really clean and together. Not that it wasn't tight and all that earlier. It just it just had a wash of a lot going on. It's not supposed to feel kind of pointed and uh like it's not supposed to feel rigid. I don't feel even though the riffs are technical, it still has this looseness to it. Maybe the way they're not super palm muted, very open, things are running together, vocals, guitar squeals, dive bombs.

[00:08:00]And maybe that's the place this is supposed to happen. The breakdown.

[00:08:05]Everything really I just feel the dad joke coming on.

[00:08:09]Everything really converges here as they say. Um and it really gets your attention. Like we've had one flavor of dissonance and intensity. This is all coming together here.

[00:08:25]Everything's just cleaned up. It's in unison.

[00:08:32]some kind of walk down there. Okay, I'm going to go back to when he goes into that.

[00:08:55]Ooh.

[00:09:00]chromatic either way. What is it?

[00:09:03]Are they speeding up slowly here?

[00:09:05]Absolutely.

[00:09:07]Okay, that confirms these like gradual tempo changes, which for a style of music like this, that's very tough to pull off if you're not all playing together live. I'm not saying it can't be done, but to match a pre-recorded take of like a drummer and be in there trying to match it on guitar or bass is I' we've I think I've tried that in other songs and other bands maybe for like a a little transition and just it takes longer than it should if you were just there to kind of bang it out in person. So that brings into question whether this was recorded pretty live or maybe the instruments were together. You just never know. But either way, you don't hear those gradual tempo changes a lot in this style of music, rock, metal.

[00:09:47]Everything's very kind of on the grid.

[00:09:50]Not saying it's like everything's quantized to a click track, but it's I always enjoy hearing these. Always fascinate me.

[00:10:05]So, I keep up Woo!

[00:10:32]Wow!

[00:10:37]Oh my god.

[00:10:49]What am I going to play?

[00:10:56]Yeah. Yeah. This is like that kind of slayer thing now. Thrashwise, but in their style.

[00:11:12]Damn, man.

[00:11:21]One thing it it it really is uh that is familiar, their their riff crafting does have a lot of those classic thrash elements in a way. You know, the kind of D like a little tag on the end there that's usually a little half stepish you know or you know just something like that. Then it goes back to something more one or two note oriented.

[00:11:51]So it has that kind of classic approach to the riff a a b kind of thing. And then they have the sort of other version of that that's So there is that element of like what I like peeking through, but it's just so heavy. And not even like a death metal kind of heavy, just like a a dissonant kind of heavy. There's different flavors of heaviness, of course. I don't know the right adjectives for this one yet.

[00:12:19]Dissonant, um, shrill, and not in a bad way, just the kind of the tension points of the piece. The, you know, it was what I was saying in the very, was this the very last video? I don't know if these are going up in order. I'm kind of filming out of order right now. Um the episode I released on Comeback Kid. Yeah, that should be right before this. Anyway, I was saying that they have the uh approach where the vocals and the riffs are harsh, but to make up for it melodically, there's a lot of like really pretty melodies happening in the guitar parts behind it. This is not that. This is dissonant riffs, harsh vocals, and then where the guitar might get melodic and do something to kind of counterbalance, it's just being more dissonant, too. You know, we have the So, everything's in that flavor. It's a whole different type of thing, even though it's heavy.

[00:13:10]So, just kind of comparing that to maybe like Comeback Kid, whether they run in the same circles, I imagine at some point. That's just my observation. Where there's a chance to add melody, they just simply don't.

[00:13:23]That's not supposed to. I get it.

[00:13:29]Yeah.

[00:13:33]So, it's I love that riff writing format cuz I think like that as a bass player.

[00:13:42]You're just kind of waiting for that fourth bar turn around. All right.

[00:14:02]Oh, that's nasty.

[00:14:18]God man.

[00:14:24]Same thing there.

[00:14:28]Breaking it up. Breaking up the the kind of straighter thing with the triplet quarter note triplet thing.

[00:14:41]Whoa.

[00:14:44]>> We've arrived at something chill, which I didn't think was going to happen.

[00:14:58]Nice >> G minor thing here.

[00:15:16]Snarly. I'm glad I got to kind of hear the bass by itself.

[00:15:23]Real quickly, just because I should, I'm going to kick on the overdrive channel.

[00:15:27]It's again a situation where I don't think I'm going to have the correct drive.

[00:15:32]do something kind of nasty like that.

[00:15:34]Take out some bass. I might boost some low mids, less treble.

[00:15:42]I don't know. How would I even?

[00:15:47]And just to be down in their zone, I might as well something kind of pignarly like that.

[00:16:02]about each other.

[00:16:12]H close enough.

[00:16:17]It's really burpy.

[00:16:29]Yeah. Dump dunk.

[00:16:52]So much trione.

[00:17:02]This is like the I think the first hardcore song I've heard with like movements like this. Usually these types of songs are really in and out. And what I was going to say about this melodic section, it kind of came in uh you know, real pretty on this. Well, now I'm in a different tuning. So, can I even play it? I don't know.

[00:17:24]We kind of were in this in this area, right? Vocals got more melodic, but it wasn't the typical melodic reprieve. I thought it wasn't like, okay, now we're kind of chilling out. This was almost like weird fever dream. The more those vocals went on, and it kind of signified it was going to pick back up pretty soon. Strange song structure for sure movements, but they they kind of go together. They kind of don't. I'm just trying to get my head around that. Uh just that writing style for this genre, for a longer song.

[00:18:10]>> I can't make this stuff out.

[00:18:16]I don't know.

[00:18:34]That That might be my favorite rift of the piece.

[00:18:52]I'm just making up.

[00:19:00]I don't think I mean I I would have to sit there a while to get these kind of a tunnel things. It's not like a typical pattern. I can go, oh, it's it's, you know, it's this kind of no idea.

[00:19:46]Yeah, squealies.

[00:20:02]Feverd dreams the only word I can come up with. They've not given you any sense of like again that was kind of like a melodic resolve but it got weird quickly and then went back into this spoken word thing.

[00:20:22]Again, I've been very vocal about coming up listening to very heavy music, stuff that I would technically consider more heavy than this, but again, it's like a different kind of flavor. I don't I'm not finding the right ways to uh differentiate the two. This is a really uncomfortable dissonant kind of heaviness. And again, I think it's the first foray for me into something that feels familiar heavywise, like the riff structure. I hear like bits of like Slayer and the big four of Thrash and just some of the the riff crafting, but the vocals and the lead guitar are different for me. Again, I think in the bands that might have even toured with Converge, there's always like a different kind of maybe it's the whole song isn't that way. It's just most of the song. This was a whole song, 7 minutes of that dissonant discomfort and just the orchestrations of the lead guitars, the the dissonant stuff. That's kind of the newest thing for me. I felt like a lot of the bands I listen to might allude to that very quickly.

[00:21:37]There's always more of the calculated academic melodic thing that eventually comes in and pulls you out of it. This is stuck in the quick sand of dissonance. As far as a channel that analyzes music, I don't know what to say more than what I've already said. It's all over the place. The bass played a very strange role. It did have a lot of independent lines, but not in your typical like it didn't start a section, you know? It wasn't like it broke and the bass chug something out and then it went in. It it kind of had its own little moment there, but it didn't really attach to anything else. And again, the song structure being this sort of what felt like movements to me, even though some of the riffs I feel like at the end were similar to what we heard. Yeah, I'm not denying there's a nice songwriting undercurrent, but it's just a whole different uh flavor for me.

[00:22:24]That's very, very, very, very cool. You know, I'm going to have to hear a lot of sides of this band to kind of feel like where can I land this in terms of how am I going to file this away and heavy bands that bands I listen to with something kind of new but still kind of familiar in some ways. Thanks to PRD over on Patreon, Dean's List member for uh choosing this track. But thank you guys for hanging out with me today. If you'd like to participate and support the channel and be involved in our community, Patreon is well now one of the best ways to do it. The other is to grab you some swag, shoplow.com, get you a shirt, all that good stuff. Please make sure you subscribe to the channel.

[00:22:58]I love you all. See you in the next one.