Converge

Jacob Bannon and Nate Newton of Converge go record shopping at Amoeba Hollywood in this "What's In My Bag?" episode. They dig into some of their favorite music, from the punk rock of Nomeansno and the crossover metallic hardcore of Cro-Mags to Bolt Thrower’s brilliant final album and a record guaranteed to make everyone leave your house. Hum of Hurt and Love Is Not Enough -- Converge's two new albums released this year -- are out now via Deathwish / Epitaph.

Converge's picks:
• Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out The Lights (CD) 
• Dead Moon - Defiance (LP) 
• The Hellacopters - Head Off (LP) 
• Trouble - Revelations Of The Insane (LP) 
• NoMeansNo - Wrong (LP) 
• Cro-Mags - Best Wishes (LP) 
• Embrace - Embrace (LP) 
• At The Gates - The Ghost Of A Future Dead (LP) 
• Marty Robbins - Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs (LP) 
• Darkthrone - Pre-Historic Metal (LP) 
• King Crimson - Red (LP) 
• Bolt Thrower - Those Once Loyal (LP) 
• Robin Trower - Bridge Of Sighs (LP) 
• Leeway - Born To Expire (T-SHIRT) 
• Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats (LP) 
• Rick Rubin - The Creative Act: A Way of Being (BOOK) 
• Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (LP) 

Featured Artist: Converge

Editor: Brendt Rioux
Executive Producer: Rachael McGovern
Producer/Director: Craig Miller
Assistant Director: Derich Heath
Cameras: Aaron Araki, Derich Heath
Audio Recorded by: Patrick Emswiler
Assistant Editor: Patrick Emswiler

Watch Converge's "What's In My Bag?" episode on Amoeba.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hey, this is Jake from Converge. He doesn't speak for me. My name is Nate, and I play in the band Converge.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

And I wear it Amoeba today, shopping, doing what's in my bag. And hopefully you like some of our picks today. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_04 0:36

Let's look in here. Let's see what we got. Oh, I got a CD. Ooh. Look at this that holds it. Look at that thing. Remember?

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

You remember when C came in the big cardboard boxes? The long box, yeah? Yeah, and you used to, I used to keep them and hang them on my wall. First thing today, Richard and Linda Thompson. Richard Thompson, one of the great underrated guitar players, played in Fairport Convention, did lots of cool stuff. You should listen to this record. It's really, really good. And this one has Wall of Death on it, which is such a great song.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

My turn. Alright, my turn. Let's start with Dead Moon.

SPEAKER_10 1:34

It's a listen in the West of the Dow.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

So I was familiar with the Dead Moon world, but not an active listener for many years. And Steve Vontil actually changed that for me. He's a huge fan of this band. And honestly, you can't go wrong. Anywhere, everything's brilliant, garage rock. It's soulful, it's gritty, it's grimy, it's emotional. I absolutely adored this band, and I'm so grateful to have discovered it for myself now. I'm happy for you. Thank you, buddy. Appreciate that.

SPEAKER_10 2:08

A new kids on the block and taking my place.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

Since you picked Dead Moon, helicopters head off. This was their farewell record. It's all covers. And one of them is a Dead Moon cover, Rescue.

SPEAKER_10 2:30

I want to rescue you.

unknown 2:35

Make up for everything!

SPEAKER_04 2:38

I'm sorry. I love Dead Moon and I love that song. I think their version's better. Fuck off. Yeah. No, it's cool. I understand why people would say that to me. I'm expecting the hate. I actually have now listened to it. In the comments, I'm expecting the hate. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

I'm also a helicopter said, so I I love helicopters.

SPEAKER_04 2:56

This was bittersweet for me when it came out because they were breaking up. You know, they were one of my favorite rock and roll bands in the world. They were saying goodbye, and you know, when I found out it was all covers, I was like, oh, that's kind of a bummer. But it's so good. And like it turned me on to stuff that I didn't know about. Like, uh, here we go. Midnight Angels, that song. It's by the Peep Shows, who I didn't know before this record.

SPEAKER_08 3:19

It's worth checking out.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Trouble. Oh yeah. Revelations of the Unsane. I've never seen this record before. It's a collection of demos and rarities. If you're not familiar with Trouble, they are a would you say proto-Doom?

SPEAKER_04 3:54

I don't know if they would call themselves.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

There's the heavy metal bands of themselves. But they're absolutely fantastic. They're definitely a sleeper of a band. If you're sort of a fan of Sabbath, or if you're a fan of anything that sort of leans Doom Metal or sort of new wave of British heavy metal in a way, I think you might even get something out of.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

They go pretty hand in hand with like the obsessed.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Vitus and all of that. Candle Mass. Band's band. Brilliant logo as well. Looks like it's going to delay.

SPEAKER_04 4:26

Alright, no means no. Wrong. I don't even know where to start talking about this record because I love it so much. There was nothing else like this before this band. Not to make this an us thing, but we just had an album come out called Love Is Not Enough. We have another record coming out called Hum of Hurt. Someone was asking me what the difference between the two new Converge records are, and I said, if Love Is Not Enough is Slayer, then Hum of Hurt is no means no. Accurate. Yeah. You need to get into this record. It's huge, huge influence on both of us. This was a game-changing record for me.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Genre defining almost? It made it.

SPEAKER_04 5:25

Genre defying.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Defying? Yes, defying. Let's say that. Genre defiling.

SPEAKER_10 5:31

With us.

SPEAKER_05 5:41

Become too much.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

I'll bring out the hammer here. Oh, there we go. This is Crow Mag's Best Wishes. The album that everybody should be talking about when they talk about the Crow Mags.

unknown 5:56

You want the background I'm fear? You want the Vegeta I am here.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

To me, it's a brilliant crossover album. It does everything that I want the subgenre to do. It connected with me like no other crossover metallic hardcore record of that era did. Sounds brilliant, recorded Normandy sound. Incredible sounds came out of that studio for them as well as many other bands of the era. And this record, to me, it's a Bona Fide classic.

SPEAKER_04 6:23

It's got crush the demoniac. That's that's all you need.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Harley, if you get to see this, thank you for making this album.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Do you know how many people have tried to rewrite that record? You can't. Like thousands of bands have tried.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

This lineup, that four-piece, fire.

SPEAKER_04 6:46

Yeah. Incredible. It's been done. Stop trying. It's all there. Okay, so we're talking about hardcore. There you go. So this is my favorite hardcore record of all time. Many would argue with me and say this is not technically a hardcore record. They're incorrect. They're dumb.

SPEAKER_07 7:08

Nothing I do ever seems to work out right.

SPEAKER_04 7:19

Musically, it's like this weird crossover of early first wave hardcore meets like almost killing joke or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

And it's important to know that the Revolution Summer Era was happening at that time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:33

And so DC hardcore just went through a sea change that quickly.

SPEAKER_07 7:48

What did I do?

SPEAKER_04 7:50

This may be the most poignant lyrical record of all time. Of all for me. A big part of who I am. The lyrics to do not consider yourself free. It holds true completely today. It seems like it could have been written last week. Shaped the way I viewed the world before. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

So this is the final At the Gates album. We lost our friend Tompa and he was gracious enough to record vocals for this entire record. Was it the week before surgery that essentially took him out of being able to be a vocalist? And we later lost him. It's emotional to hold. One last time.

SPEAKER_04 9:17

Marty Robbins. El Paso, Big Iron. This is just a great record.

SPEAKER_06 9:21

Oh, he might have gone on living, but he made one fatal slip when he tried to match the ranger with a big iron on his hip. Big iron on his hip.

SPEAKER_04 9:32

It's kind of gotten a big uh resurgence in the past few years, I think, because of Breaking Bad.

SPEAKER_07 9:37

One night a wild young cowboy came in. Wild as the West Texas win.

SPEAKER_04 9:48

This was the first record I ever owned in my life. My dad gave me this record when I was like five, and it was his copy from when he was a kid. That's awesome. And I still have that copy, and I love this record. When you're five, and you see that dude on the cover of a fluorescent pink record, you're like, that's my shit. Give me that. I need to listen to that, and then I'm gonna go outside and pretend to kill my friends. It's gonna be really cool.

SPEAKER_05 10:16

Couldn't stand it any longer with this life that I'd begun. So I said goodbye to T and became a running girl.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

We're gonna go Finn Reese. We're gonna go to the new Darkthrone album. Oh, I haven't heard it yet. Okay. This is prehistoric metal. I love that title so much. It's the best title ever. I'm a super fan of Fenries. I respect him greatly. He's a fantastic artist, he's a savant, a true super fan of all things music. And I love what art comes out of him through that. Everything that Darkthrone does is black metal adjacent, right? But it's still the spirit of like new wave of British heavy metal now. He mixes in weird atmospheric stuff. Sometimes records are incredibly loose, sometimes they're incredibly technical, sometimes they're tight, they're everything. I love that they have been able to evolve through the character of Darkthrone over the years. It's just really inspiring to see and witness.

SPEAKER_04 11:20

And they don't take themselves too seriously, which I always love that they take the piss out of themselves and their fans concept. My favorite Dark Thrones song, possibly my favorite song title ever, is Hiking Metal Punks. We've all been there. Yeah, you'd sometimes you want to hike, sometimes you're gonna listen to metal, but you're still punk. You gotta do what you gotta do. Much respect. I fucking listen to this record all the time still, and every single time, I'm like, how the fuck did they do this in 1974? Like how this is music written by people who are real musicians, not like us, that can like read music and count things. I can I just do that, it's like the du du and then you go wham whang. It's fine. And then you scream. They don't do that. They write it out and they're like, oh no, you're playing that incorrectly. You have to do a paradidal and a dinghy flap thing.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

A ding-a-flapper.

SPEAKER_04 12:45

There needs to be more bonkel on the flanger.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

So this is bolt thrower for those once loyal. This record is their last record before they lost their drummer and essentially stopped existing as a current band. They also made a choice with this record that this was the perfect bolt thrower album that was ever recorded or written, and there was no reason to write any more music after this record. They stood tall on that hill and they were like, no, it's got everything we need. It's perfect. And I a hundred percent agree. I followed this band since I was probably 16 years old through their sort of like loose period kind of punk everything thing that was happening. It was weird. They were a weird band for a long time, but they finally really connected over, you know, the span of their discography. And this record is everything. It's sharp, it's precise, it's heavy, it's perfectly recorded. It has every trope that I want in a bolt thrower record and every powerful riff. It's it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_04 14:16

What I love about that band is you're not getting Bolt Thrower to do anything that they don't want to do.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

They are a modern crass in a way.

SPEAKER_04 14:24

Yeah, they do everything on their own terms, and it's really refreshing. We played a festival with them in Belgium, Eper festival. We were both on the main stage together, and you know, all day bands were playing, and then Bolt Thrower comes to build stage and everything, and every if they close it off, but I walk past the back of the stage and it said, no admittance except converge. And I was like, We're cool, we're cool, dice. Robin Trower. Bridge of Size. I was torn between this or Twice Removed from yesterday. This record is probably him perfecting what he was going for on Twice Removed and the title track, Bridge of Size. You like heavy riffs? That's the one. It's super heavy, but it's never aggressive. You put this record on. And if you don't vibe, you don't vibe. No vibe.

SPEAKER_07 15:43

When my time has passed, is a chance to ask for a little bit of sympathy. Just a little bit of sympathy.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

I'm gonna go shirts. We need them. We need shirts. I brought two shirts on the tour. I'm wearing one now. It doesn't smell very good. So I might I need another shirt. So when I was talking about Normandy Sound earlier, Lee Wei, Born to Expire, was also recorded in that studio.

unknown 16:07

Shuttle loud! Face me! Make the guy just to make it beautiful! Face me, the good, the bad end, we are sea.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

This visual is of one of the greatest albums of all time for crossover and metallic hardcore. I would say it's a peak. Top three.

SPEAKER_04 16:27

Top three. It's on Mount Rushmore.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Eddie Sutton was one of my favorite vocalists of the genre. Beautiful album, beautiful shirt. I'm gonna pay homage to him. Rest in peace.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

Do you want to make everyone leave your house? Put this record on. Throbbin Gristle. 20 jazz funk greats with no jazz, no funk. No fun. Zero fun. I love it. No one else I know wants to hear this when I put this on, and that's their problem. It's not a you problem.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

It's not a you problem.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

So this is I grabbed a book. I'm so smart.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

It's not that smart. I actually have this as an audio book, mainly. So this is the creative act. This is the Rick Rubin book, which is essentially Rick waxing poetic about his thoughts on the creative process and how you can apply some of his logic and practices to your own. It's pretty interesting. You learn some from it. Some of it's a little fluffy, some of it's you know really poignant and it really uh connects with me. So I really encourage people to pick up this book if they're a creative individual and they want some guidance sometimes when they're feeling a bit lost.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

The experience of our inner world is often completely overlooked. If we focus on what's going on inside of ourselves, a wealth of material can be found.

SPEAKER_04 18:14

Gil Scott Heron, the revolution will not be televised.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

The revolution will not go better with coke. The revolution will not fight turns that may cause bad rap. The revolution will put you in the driver seat.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

I was turned on to Gil Scott Heron by PBS when I was like 15 years old, and I saw a video of him reciting The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, just walking down the street, and it was so charismatic, it just drew me in, and I I had to know what this guy was about. Much like that embraced record, this record really shaped the way I view the world. Whitey on the moon, I mean, directly pointed at the ills of modern society. I'm thankful that this record exists.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

And her face and arms began to swell. And Whitey's on the moon. You know, I just about had my film of Whitey on the Moon. I think I'll send these doctor bills, AMAL special, to Whitey on the Moon.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Thank you both so much. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it. It's our pleasure. We're so happy to have you in today.

SPEAKER_04 19:22

Happy to be here.