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It's the core group that delivers the most astonishing displays of hardcore fury and progressive musical exploration on Axe to Fall
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The closest Converge has ever come to pure doom metal, Ballou’s sustained chords, bent strings, and screeching lead fills are anchored by Newton’s and Koller’s disciplined approach, the chemistry more than apparent during the Big Black-esque break, during which all four members, well, converge in a way that has the rest of us marveling at not only how these guys manage to still sound so fresh on record, but actually get better with each one they put out.
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A huge array of guests help out, representing acts like Disfear, 108, Genghis Tron, and Neurosis. They are too many to list, but the bottom line is, they work. Whether they're yelling, singing, or laying down leads, they fit their songs. And that in itself is fitting.
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Axe To Fall makes good with an appetite for reinvention.
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Converge create art-school hardcore while still delivering on metal’s basest needs.
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Alternative PressSure the plot has been done to death and you know what's going to happen; but the personalities involved draw you in like a rubbernecker gawking at a highway accident fromth safety of his car. [Nov 2009, p.105]
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Q MagazineStaying true to a 20-year career of uncompromising extremity, it will take commitment to breach this seventh album's walls of noise. [Dec 2009, p. 113]
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MojoIt's Converge's energy that impresses first, their brutal, full-blooded fury, the sheer physical assault; listen closer, however, and you'll find a group as inventive and progressive in their riffage as Slayer or Metallica at their early apex, a compulsive complexity to their chaos. [Feb 2010, p. 100]
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It worries me that cheesy metal riffs have made their way onto a Converge record, making it sound like it might be accepted on tour with Mastodon. It’s not a matter of breaking apart but experimentation that might not always go right.
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In general, 'Axe to Fall' speaks towards the stagnancy of most bands in the metal genre. The collaborators here can't even help a band as good as Converge make a solid record and when examining Converge's almost flawless discography that is wholly unexplainable.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 49 out of 56
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Mixed: 4 out of 56
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Negative: 3 out of 56
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Sep 25, 2011
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MartinNOct 29, 2009
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JonathanDOct 27, 2009