Year Of Metal #067: Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I
Even though I’m more than halfway into this heavy endeavour, it’s still a relief when I approach a record that has an easy way in for a lily-livered indie dweeb like me. Converge are a storied act who’ve been doing it for over three decades and helped to pioneer metalcore (a subgenre on which I’m not entirely sure), but team them up with Chelsea Wolfe and you’ve got me interested.
Off the bat, this is a tremendous record, one of the best so far. It defies easy categorisation but contains loads of what I like in metal. There’s real weight to it and some huge melodies (often anchored by Wolfe) that make it an easy sell to a wider audience, but they’re not afraid to hit some harder sounds, chuck in some grinding, punishing guitars, and go for the jugular on the death screams. I think the most obvious comparison for me is Fucked Up, who similarly combine the very pretty and totally harsh, but this has an even wider palette than those punkers.
The opening title track is a gothic masterwork. Ominous pianos open it up. Wolfe’s vocals take a backseat to some jagged guitars that sound like coffin lids creaking open. By the time the chords and drums are thudding in unison, the sound is amazingly deep and dense. It’s a showcase in how to produce something like this: it’s built around noise, by necessity everything has to be big and loud, but nothing’s straining over anything else. The instruments are basically monotonal by this point, leaving Wolfe free to coo spookily over the racket.
I’m saying this in hindsight, of course, but if I had to state what I’d expected from this album going in, it’d be something roughly like this, uncompromising but totally listenable. “Viscera Of Men” follows it up with the same kind of thing, though this one’s more keen on exploring dynamics, from hushed chanting that evokes hooded druids to pounding drums and a funereal organ on maximum overdrive.
What I didn’t expect were some of the changes of direction that follow. Most notable is one of my favourite tracks, “Flower Moon”. This is pure psych/stoner gear, a langorous, druggy track that could have been recorded by Iron Butterfly or a similar bunch of weirdos from back in the day. The production, handled by the band and Wolfe, is so rich and gooey; you can sink completely into this song, from the rolling, twisting riff to the impactful drum films that dot the otherwise near-catatonic piece (only percussionist Ben Koller seems in a rush to get anywhere; he attacks the kit like a frustrated designated driver dealing with his idiot stoner mates). By the time the clean vocals are joined by screams, it’s just about the biggest thing you’ve ever heard.
They’re remarkably adept at a pop hook, too. “Failure Forever” is an intriguing piece precisely because it’s so straight down the line, a heartstring-grabbing metalcore job with a super catchy chorus. Then there’s “Coil”, which is just downright pretty until it reaches an incredibly dramatic peak. At times they sound a bit like Rammestein here when the music reaches full march; I don’t know what kind of venues these guys are playing, but this stuff could easily fill a sizable space.
This stuff sounds like a blast to write and produce, and that creative energy comes across big time on the record. You could easily have a too many cooks situation unfolding, but evidently the various parties all brought something different to the table, and the record branches out in many directions while retaining an overarching big, gothic heaviness. I’ll certainly go back through Converge’s catalogue to investigate their earlier hardcore days, but I’m very pleased to see there’s a Bloodmoon II pencilled in already.
