Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind
Heavy music’s most established and innovative band, Converge will release their highly anticipated new studio album, All We Love We Leave Behind on October 8th, along with a deluxe package that includes a 48 page full-color hardcover, clothbound book with original art created by front-man Jacob Bannon via Epitaph (vinyl on Deathwish).
Accompanying the track ‘Aimless Arrow,’ is a new video directed by talented filmmaker Max Moore (Whips/Chains, Code Orange Kids, etc) that visually expands on the heavy emotional lyrical content that the song carries.
Considered one of the most intense, important, and influential metal/hardcore bands of all time, the band's latest album is the most integral album to date in a catalog that's celebrated to an almost religious degree by countless fans of punk, metal and hardcore.
Creating the most antagonistic and artistic heavy album of the year, the single ‘Aimless Arrow,’ demonstrates the uncompromising, evolutionary new experimentation in All We Love We Leave Behind, which breaks the most aggressive form of music down to its barebones.
For the first time in years, All We Love We Leave Behind is an album that contains no special guests or outside collaborators and every aspect of the music, production and aesthetics of the album was handled by Converge in order to give listeners an unfiltered glimpse into the creative vision of these Boston-based innovators.
Recorded and mixed by guitarist Kurt Ballou at his renowned Godcity Studios in Salem, Massachusetts, All We Love We Leave Behind is a no-frills Converge album that sees the band - which also features vocalist Jacob Bannon, bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller eschewing fancy production techniques in order to create seventeen songs that work as a cohesive whole yet can also stand on their own.
"There's no artificial distortion, triggers, or Auto-Tune on this album," Ballou explains, "it's all organic, it’s real sounds that capture the way the band performs live."
"I think we really stepped up our game on this record. The most important thing to this band is that with every album we want to create something that excites us and moves us in some way," explains Bannon. "There are a lot of subtle nuances on this record are really special to us and we definitely hit those individually on this record."
From the classic rock-inflected, guitar tapping madness of ‘Sadness Comes Home’ to the technical acrobatics of ‘Aimless Arrow’ and relentless assault of ‘Shame In The Way,’ All We Love We Leave Behind is an extremely varied album that has enough sonic shifts to captivate each listener's attention.
"It's always been important for us to have a lot of dynamics in our music because no one wants to listen to a million miles an hour all the time," Bannon responds when asked about the melodic mid-tempo groove of a song like "Coral Blue."
Having been credited with giving rise to a genre and influencing countless bands all over the world, Converge have always been the type of band that never fit into one subculture, creating a sound that is entirely their own.
The band credit that to the fact that since their 2001 landmark album Jane Doe, they haven't had any member changes and maintain the unwavering individualism and uncompromising artistic vision they had when they formed over 21 years ago.
Following the release of All We Love We Leave Behind, Converge will embark on an extensive European tour in November and December this year. For full list of dates, see further below.