Converge
No Heroes

THE REVIEW

Please; and I say this with all my heart: those with weak hearts, abstain!!!!!! Here, there's a serious risk of a heart attack, a total collapse!!

After Jane Doe from 2002, which pushed extreme music forward by light-years by rewriting it from the inside (what we now commonly call metal-core is the result of the experiments of this combo and a few others: like Today Is The Day and Neurosis), and after the subsequent 2004 album, You Fail Me, which opened a more accessible, more punk, and less intense door (thanks also to their contract with Epitaph), this latest album simply titled No Heroes comes out. . . and they come out with the most brutal work they have conceived so far. It's a derailing train at full speed that tramples everything and doesn't stop in front of anything this No Heroes, it destroys the mind and the body. . .

It starts off with the initial noise loop of heartache, a scant minute and a half of noise grind and post hardcore. . . the first part of the album goes like this. . . up until the fifth track, they don't go over a minute and a half in duration. . . but don't think this affects the outcome. . . nothing could be more wrong!!! The band's mastery in handling such scorching stuff makes it so that even in one minute, they know how to condense more ideas than many other bands can in 5 minutes; don't think of a blender. . . . everything is compact here!! Heterogeneous but homogeneous at the same time!!!

With the sixth track, you get the first real song. . . a frenzied and thrashy rhythm carries the piece forward. . . compelling and devastating!! Not even Slayer could do better!! The level of unhealthy adrenaline is through the roof!! If you had someone in front of you that pissed you off, you'd surely kick them in the mouth. . . without hesitation!! The surprise comes with the eighth track, the longest on the album. . . a mini-suite of pain and suffering. . . on vocals, in the first part there's a friend of Jacob, with a warm and melancholic tone; the acoustic guitar takes over, with a loop so sad and hopeless that it gives goosebumps; the song continues to build in intensity. . . . until the final collapse. . . after 9 minutes of sadness and despair sublimated into music.

From here to the end of the album, it's a succession of memorable and ingenious moments!!!

A mammoth lava flow that does not cease to stop in front of anything. . . Gorgeous Trophy Scars, where the degree of intensity increases vertiginously!! The album has a circular structure, it starts devastating and ends devastating with the destructive To The Lions, acidic and malevolent. . . Converge almost seem to take satisfaction in the sight of all us mere mortals who writhe under such power of execution. . . with a malevolent grin, they'll smash us in the face like no one has ever been able to do until now, perhaps only Today Is The Day can stand up to them regarding power and acidity!!

They are perpetually ahead. . . always one step above the competition. . . always looking beyond. . . They fear no rivals. . . these are the Converge!! I say it and I repeat it: those with weak hearts, abstain!!