![]() ![]() ![]() Self-proclaimed "hardcore kids playing leftover Slayer riffs," Converge had by then managed to pile subgenre upon subgenre upon subgenre, combining all their relatively narrow sonic approaches into one vast, articulate roar. There were three other demos, as well as three DIY Boston compilation spots between 19, the year they released their first full length, Halo in a Haystack. Legend has it that Converge recorded their first album in 1992, and though I've seen the physical record in the hands of some lucky YouTube user, I've never personally heard or found a copy. Converge was lucky to have barely caught the aftershock of hardcore's nuclear blast, and was spawned by its aftermath, absorbing what its members craved from the dysfunctional Boston underground gene pool. Soon enough there was an explosion of microgenres: post-hardcore, grindcore, emocore, metalcore, applecore, core of the earth, corecore-all stemming from the same place, each unique sonically and philosophically (attitude is everything in heavy music). But like almost all things counter-culture, the scene died in the late '80's/early '90's, giving birth to an incredibly creative and chaotic chasm of "lost boy" types. This particular bunch of hooligans quickly became known for constituting one of the most intolerable, intense, and violent scenes in the country, all under an overarching theme of togetherness and brotherhood. These years began and ended with bands like Negative FX, SS Decontrol, D.Y.S, and other D.C-influenced yet in the end Bostonian-to-the-core outfits. They first recorded at the end of the "golden era" of Boston hardcore, a time when straight-edge and its crew mentality had reached its militant and extremely aggressive culmination. Lol.Ĭonverge was a band brought up in an interesting time. I suppose you could consider me a nihilist, save for the fact that I don't really like to identify with anyone. ![]() Making generalizations is the norm in the social media I frequent, but I don't yet have those rights in the larger culture I am confused and disenfranchised by. I feel guilty speaking for a group, but I do it anyway. I have also seen way too many pictures of cats. My social life relies on my Blackberry's calendar, which I have synced to digitally RSVPed events. I am informed and enraged, but not involved, and in my own little saturated opinion-bubble, completely without influence. I am by nature anxious but apathetic, interested in everything and bored with all of it. I have exactly 912 friends, and while looking up that valued statistic of mine, I became so distracted by the updates I had to check that I forgot why I'd asked. The emotional disconnect with the world around me grows larger with every new stranger's companionship on Facebook. I'm convinced of but unaffected by the apocalypse around every corner, nonplussed by every color-coded terrorism level. I am a product of the American 21st century entirely-horridly self-aware, conflicted, and confused. Collectively we agreed that in that hour there was something in the nothingness we shared a purpose a simultaneous purging and celebration of that inexplicable feeling between unbearable love, and uncontrollable primal hate. Progression through aggression: our emptiness, nihilist frustration, and anger for anger's sake was for a moment quelled. Mine weren't the only cells lost during the hour-long holocaust 150 strangers and myself just survived, and even if our restless, reckless, way-past-borderline-dangerous violence toward ourselves and each other was seemingly unprovoked, we agreed afterwards, silently, through head nods and short awkward eye contact, that we were better for it, or at least less alone than we were before. While it may very well be remnants of one of the many elbow-to-face collisions suffered at my expense, I'm not entirely positive the now sickly brownish-crimson splotches once belonged to me. Not enough to raise significant concern, though almost any mother would disagree, but certainly an amount large enough to earn me more than a few reticent glances on the half hour bus ride out of Denver. (August 2011) There's blood on my T-shirt. ![]()
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