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In the nearly three decades he’s been growling out pained lyrics, Converge’s Jacob Bannon has seen his band go from a teen project to arguably the biggest and most well-known act in hardcore music. He’s also gotten married, had two children, founded a successful record label, and started a quieter solo project. For a busy guy with a lot on his plate, Converge now offers an opportunity for the 41-year-old to get some stuff off his chest. There is enormous utility in a line like, “You don’t know what my pain feels like.” Yelling along with Converge can be an emotionally constructive exercise for both Bannon and his fans.
On The Dusk in Us, the group’s ninth album and first in five years, Converge double down on the crazy time signatures and warp-speed blasts of energy. Bannon shreds his vocal cords anew, though this time he’s focused on making himself more decipherable. To further elucidate his words, the singer ran through the stories and ideas behind each song on the album.
1. “A Single Tear”
Jacob Bannon: It’s about a much larger idea than just kids, per se: The maturation through fatherhood and gaining a sense of purpose. Fatherhood gave me a different perspective in terms of what guides me in life. It creates a whole new narrative.
I started this band when I was 12 or 13, so it’s been a major part of my life as a creative outlet since I was a kid. There’s a bit of a Peter Pan syndrome that happens with anybody within the music and art community who finds their form of expression when they’re relatively young—I don’t say that in a negative way, but it preserves your youth. I’m just like anybody else. I’m an emotional person but I’m also a guarded person. I’m not outwardly emotional aside from when I am making harder music. I work out a lot of my emotional complexities through expressing myself that way. So the concept of “A Single Tear” was quite a real thing: “A single teardrop fell.” Not an emotional outpouring, but a single tear.
2. “Eye of the Quarrel”
That’s the intent of being a self-sufficient artist who subscribes to [a DIY] ethic, but I don’t think any artist or musician is ever completely fulfilled. It’s a quest that never ends. You’re always trying to realize a vision that you might not be able to attain. There’s always a restlessness in any artist.
It’s funny, I was talking with a friend about how a lot of the things that you’re working through into your middle age are the same issues that affected you when you were a kid. They don’t necessarily resolve themselves. You still have that same pain and complexity and gray area. You might have come to a better understanding of those things, but the cause and effect is still there.
3. “Under Duress”
There’s always an “I” and a “you,” a push and pull. That’s just the nature of writing these big, open letters to the world about whatever I happen to be dealing with at that particular time. It’s always me talking in first person; I don’t think I’m ever writing a character. That’s one of the major flaws I have in art, where it’s too personal for me. But it’s just the way I like to write. I’m always vulnerable when I write. I don’t write just to throw together a bunch of things that sound cool.
I had a conversation with a guy in a band a bunch of years ago, and he was like, “What are your songs about?” I was like, “Oh, they’re about all these moments and interactions in my life.” I asked him, “What are your songs about?” He said, “Nothing.” He was being a little self-deprecating, but at the same time, he was like, “I kind of put things together that sound good. I just evoke a mood.” There’s a lot of that out there.
4. “Arkhipov Calm”
I’m not a bookworm but I read all the time. I fall down wormholes of articles. I’m always fascinated by wars and world history and the complexities of all those things. Aren’t we all? Just how broken the world has always been. One of the things that blows my mind when it comes to people who are in power and doing these incredibly insane, historic things that can change the world in a heartbeat is that they’re just people. They’re just like you and I. People aren’t inherently good or bad, they’re just human beings.
Arkhipov’s story really affected me and showed how somebody calm of character could change the world. There’s been lots of instances in my life where I’ve felt like I was being tested by whatever situation I was in. It could be something as simple as losing your cool in public over something, and there’s a resilience that you have to find—a, dare I say, maturity that you have to hold onto to navigate those waters. When I was a kid, if something affected me I would have a much more reactionary response. I wasn’t a particularly violent guy, but you would have that explosion. I’ve been working really hard over the last decade or more to be super self-aware of what that kind of energy does to the world and to the people around you.
5. “I Can Tell You About Pain”
Those two lines together tell the story of the entire song: I swear I’m trying, but sometimes I feel dysfunctional and broken because of what I’ve experienced in life. Sometimes those things get in the way of functioning at the level that you want to function at.
I was writing that song in a pretty volatile moment and I needed to get something out of me. I just felt incredibly restless, almost like when you feel like you just didn’t say all the right things you wanted to say in a situation. So it was spilling out that day. I didn’t have a title for the song or anything like that, it was just the violent poetry of this thing. But then I remembered this old ad for a pharmaceutical company in the late ’70s or early ’80s with the now-deceased wrestler Dusty Rhodes wearing a really simple shirt that said, “I can tell you about pain.” So it’s a very serious song with an homage to a childhood hero of mine. You have to have a little bit of sense of humor when you operate in a world of heavy music sometimes.
6. “The Dusk in Us”
I write all the time, and those ideas live in a book or in a file on a laptop, so I can go back to it when it’s time to start crafting songs. It would be a really daunting task to go into the studio without that kind of preparation. When I was a kid, I had to have every aspect of what I wanted to do ready to go, because I might only have one or two days to do all the vocal tracking. Those crash courses probably helped me create an approach to writing. And on this song, when I first heard the chorus melody, I started thinking about a few lines I wrote a few weeks before that fit into it.
On other records that we’ve done, I’ve been more concerned with getting something out of it emotionally, so it didn’t really bother me if a line blurred the lines between sounding like a monster and being decipherable as long as the emotion came through. But sometimes I really want to be understood and be heard. Now I’m trying to do both.
7. “Wildlife”
Not necessarily to this song, though I could see the parallels for sure. It’s not open-ended but it’s obtuse enough to be able to be relatable to a variety of things. For me, the song is about human nature and how all humans have a tendency to want to put lightning in a bottle and have to explain what something is. The lines, “And the wildlife was hunted not for the heart but the hide/To warm the bones of cowards that were left behind, and the lotus wilts with the guilt of the wasted time/What does it say about the ones who never even tried,” are talking about that idea that people don’t necessarily value what they should value in life.
8. “Murk & Marrow”
When the band comes to me with music, sometimes they’re like, “Sorry for not leaving any space for you and making it like musical gymnastics and you have to figure out a way to jump through all the hoops.” When I went in the room with the mic to do my track on this one, [Converge guitarist] Kurt [Ballou] was like, “I have no idea how you’re going to do this song.”
But you can. You figure out what works. I have a bunch of vocal styles with different intensities. Sometimes there are songs where it’s difficult to know what to do and where to do it, so I have to try a few things to see what makes sense, and this is one of those songs for sure.
9. “Trigger”
Yeah, it has a different kind of swagger. We have done things that have had a bluesy swagger before, but “Trigger” felt to me more like a Rollins Band or Jesus Lizard homage. It didn’t need a full-blown monster vocalist on top of it.
10. “Broken by Light”
With “Broken by Light,” there’s a lot going on even though it’s quite short. The first time I heard the basic verse riff, it reminded me of [veteran hardcore group] Dag Nasty, just amplified and grittier. It had a sense of melody but it had a discordant quality. It gets super ferocious.
11. “Cannibals”
It’s a really intense song, but it’s also fun. Our pet name for that song when it was initially written was called “That’s Cute.” Like: “There’s a lot of heavy songs out there. They’re cute songs. Here’s one that rips all their heads off.”
12. “Thousands of Miles Between Us”
To be honest, I don’t think about the audience when it comes to those things. I hope our audience grows with us and that they still find what we’re doing relatable, because it’s not like we’re a band that’s sloganeering or anything. When they’re personal songs about the personal complexities of life, that should be relatable. Our songs aren’t just angst. There’s a lot more in them.
13. “Reptilian”
You know how I know the album is sequenced appropriately? It leaves me wanting more after 13 songs. It’s not a short album. And when you do a 45-minute record that does not leave you sonically exhausted, you did something right. There’s enough variety and emotional depth in there that it leaves, at least for me, a bit of a longing. I don’t feel fatigued.
