![]() ![]() ![]() The Converge that made “Towing Jehova” however, are not that band. Newton and Koller stay busy in a number of side projects Bannon’s mixed media art has graced the cover of countless records, including many released by his label Deathwish Inc. Ballou, who has handled Converge’s production since 2006, is one of the most in-demand producers in heavy music. Parallel to their success as a unit, the band’s members had a direct hand in shaping the look and sound of the rest of the genre. ![]() As Jane Doe ’s cover art propagated across t-shirts, hoodies, tank tops (I’m wearing one right now, actually), tote-bags, enamel pins, wall flags and tattoo parlors the world over, Converge themselves became a fixture of metal and hardcore festivals, magazine covers, and until very recently, the upper rungs of Best Album of the Year lists anytime they released new music. After building a reputation across the underground hardcore scene for their unruly and violent live shows, Converge crashed into broader awareness with their 2001 album Jane Doe. Despite falling short on every conventional metric of industry success except longevity, Converge are one of the most critically acclaimed and culturally significant bands in the history of heavy music.Ĭonverge, currently and canonically comprised of singer/graphic designer Jacob Bannon, guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou, bassist/singer Nate Newton, and drummer/human muppet Ben Koller, emerged from Salem, MA in the mid-1990s while Bannon was still in high school. No matter the form, burning molten in the underground, palpably rigid as stone, or as ephemeral as smoke, Converge have made up roughly the same heft of psychic mass in heavy music’s collective unconscious since the late 1990s. The shape of that legend has changed in the twenty years I’ve known them, but the laws of thermodynamics have held strong. There has never been a moment since the moment I first heard them where Converge were not impressed upon me as legendary. ![]()
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