Customer Reviews

Petitioning the Empty Sky

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Converge defintely hits hard with this one. Right from the 7 min. long epic first track "Saddest Day" to the insane live performances of "Homesong" "Antithesis" and "For You". I will admit, the disc didn't hit me right away and it is sort of an aquired taste with Bannon's voice being as crazy as it is but after about 3 full listens I was completely sold. Their live performance will leave you speechless and wanting more. I highly recommend all of converge's release's to any metal/hardcore fan looking for something out of the ordinary. Also check out coalesce, dillinger escape plan, and today is the day.

I look behind me just to make sure I'm alone every time I listen to this

I'd buy this CD alone for Farewell Note To This City, but...Dead, The Saddest Day, Albatross, For You, I could go on

Buy it, and then buy Jane Doe, and then try not to jump out a window

Review by Mike Watson:

The long awaited Converge reissues have FINALLY surfaced, and Converge fanatics nation, and even worldwide are rejoicing as there is even more need to own Converge merchandise. The newly re-done CDs have been given new life through the mastering genius of Godcity Studios and the brilliant art-work of frontman Jacob Bannon. The initial records of both albums, although ground breaking and amazing albums, were both fairly poorly recorded and mastered leaving fans with an unquenched thirst for the clear quality of the music.

Converge has quenched that thirst and more with the newly re-released albums. Both albums have been given complete new life and sound astonishing compared to their original releases. The sound quality on the re-issues is leaps and bounds beyond the original pressings, making the albums far more enjoyable and easily listenable. The most noticeable difference is on Petitioning the Empty Sky. Petitioning was originally recorded fairly empty and powerless, the re-issue however blows the listener away, re-mastered in a way that things in-audible on the original release are now made very apparent.

The Converge re-issues are an absolute must have for any Converge fan.

The music on this CD is more professional, more polished, and definitely more pummeling than the previous incarnation. But is that better?! Perhaps that depends on how you feel about the original.

I've poured over this album, and the re-release of When Forever Comes Crashing, non-stop since they were both released two days ago. In the opinion of this reviewer, WFCC desperately needed the face-lift. God knows the sound quality on that album was wretched and had to be overhauled- I couldn't even listen to it and enjoy it. But Petitioning an Empty Sky has always been great, no concerns with sound quality at all. The Saddest Day, Forsaken, Color Me Blood Red, the album is littered with classic Converge tracks. Are they improved on this album? Yes and no. Saddest Day re-mastered is unbelievable. That track just leaps off the CD and kicks your ass. However, in the case of Color Me Blood Red, I think the new version is worse- the guitar riffs that I've always loved in that song are almost completely eclipsed by the bass, drums, and vocals.

HOWEVER that's my only complaint about this CD. Would I buy it again? Oh heck yeah. I'd probably pay double just to add this beauty to my collection. The new interior liner notes are chock-full of awesome art by Aaron Turner of Isis, as well as an absolutely kick-ass slip cover, picturing the awesome red painted devil guy you probably saw at the top of this page.

As a bonus, the last song is an alternate version of Love As Arson. God what a fantastic track.

So the bottom line is this. Converge fans: buy this, but keep your original as well. I've been listening to Petitioning for so long I'm happy to have new versions to rock out to as well, and most Converge fans are likely to feel the same way.

The band that brought metalcore to the masses with their strongest CD.

The Saddest Day is a true anthem, rightfully so. Amazing live, almost as good on the CD.

If you have any interest in hardcore you know this band and you know this CD. Odds are you're replacing the one you've scratched.

If you have a budding interest in hardcore this might not be the best starting point, but you'll need this CD down the road, consider it essential.

And if you're a Trustkill fan just throw out your CDs and buy this one. You'll be a better man for it.

Although this record was hard to get hold of in the uk, when i ordered it, and it finaaly arived, i was very pleasewd indeed. Owning all of the converge albums, this is my favorite, and the one i play the most. The first track is a hardcorn/metalcore masterpeice, although genre descriptions do not do this band justice. This album take stuff from all over the place, is accesible, but at the same time, find somthing new on each listen, and execllent lyrics, that could be analysed for years to come. As i have already said, much like soads toxicity, this albums goes everywhere. Overall, it gives the impression that if it was the last day on earth, you had an hour left to live, nothing else to do, you would just listen to this album. Well i would anyway.

This CD has been with me for a while as a burnt copy, but I recently bought it. Looking for a good price I came across here and was a bit annoyed about the reviews. Some are okay, but way too short to say anything substancial.

Someone said you have to like Megadeth to like Converge. Well, I can't stand Megadeth or any of those hair-metal bands from the 80's, early 90's, so I guess Converge touches a diverse audience.

If you don't know Converge yet it will take you by surpise. It is very loud and chaotic and it takes a while to notice the beauty in between the noise. This band is very technical and very unique, mixing noise with melody and having influences from punk, metal and hardcore and I can easily say it set a new sound taken further (or into another direction, I don't want to say Converge is standing still) by some of todays bands like Majority Rule. I really can't think of anything to compare it too, but if you like Dillinger Escape Plan, I'm positive you'll love Converge as well. Where DEP focusses more on technical sounds and structures, Converge mixes such elements with raw emotion. The lyrics are beautifully poetic and sad and the vocals grabs you by the troath.

The production on this album is lacking now and then, but not enough to bother me. If you haven't got anything by Converge yet, I recommend Jane Doe above PTES. It shows how the band perfected its style. If you do have Jane Doe already, you need this CD as well to hear an earlier stage of the band. This is more raw, less composed, but there are some tracks you just don't want to miss. The CD doesn't form such a united theme as Jane Doe, but offers its strength in diversity, exploration and emotion.

I recommend this CD to anyone who enjoys hardcore that takes the genre out of its punk roots into a whole new sound.

Converge sure can do it all. Rugged Slayer riffage, chunky, hard-hitting power chords, grinding leads, oddball off-kilter rhythms, throat-scraping screams, pounding drums, eerily quiet and serene interludes, steady, humming bass lines, bass soloing (!), wild shred guitar soloing, innumerable thunderous breakdowns and jarring shifts of speeds and moods, catchy gang shouts, intelligent lyrics, etc, etc, etc. And all that is just in the first song ("The Saddest Day")! Whew!

Converge exploded from Boston, Massachusetts in 1990, and even though they had already recorded several demos, a vinyl EP, and even a full-length CD prior to 1997, that year's "Petitioning The Empty Sky" is generally regarded as the band's "real" beginning. That's probably because in addition to being their best release to date, this album proved Converge were starting to mature and come into their own by developing an immediately identifiable sound. Converge's roots lie in hardcore, but it would not do them any justice to be confined to just one category. "PTES" is the ultimate shape-shifting mix of hardcore, melodic hardcore, Slayer-influenced thrash, punk, grind, black metal, death metal, emo/screamo, straight-edge, metallic hardcore (which is now known as metalcore), prog, crossover, and tech/noise/mathcore. As a result, it has been chalked up in the history books as an extremely big, important, original, and (most of all) influential extreme metal milestone that spawned a legion of imitators in not only hardcore, but all of the above genres as well.

The aforementioned set opener "The Saddest Day" is the album's undisputably biggest highpoint. It is a legendary seven-minute-long whopper that begins as a typical hardcore song and ends up all over the place. It truly redefines words like "expansive," "intricate," "awesome," "genius," "memorable," "complex," "challenging," "unpredictable," and "multi-faceted." And its seven proceeding studio tracks don't disappoint, either, even if none of them QUITE match its exact same level of excellence. "Forsaken" is a more traditional metallic hardcore skull-stomper, and is propelled by fiery, machine gun riffs, some of frontman Jacob Bannon's most deafening and black metal-lite shrieks of all, and a classic hardcore breakdown complete with a from-the-gut bellow of "go!" (a trend that has become almost pervasive in recent years).

Track three, "Albatross," marks the album's first big stylistic change that proves Converge still hold their punk influences close to them, and it even introduces some modern-day-sounding emo elements into the mix. "Albatross" is also of note for being the first song to proudly show off the band's sophisticated sense of melody (and does so to great effect). Jacob's vocals are especially twisted here; he intertwines some very deliciously melancholic and insidious clean vocals around his typical, ever-present lung-stretching screams. The track also includes a nice, aquatic, lightly-picked guitar outro that gives the listener a little time to catch his or her breath. "Dead" is also substantially more melodic than usual, and is wonderfully climactic. It builds from a peaceful intro and more melodic vocals to a mean, heavy, bullying second half bolstered by a fat, trudging, driving bass line and crunching riffs.

Next up, "Shingles" is highlighted by a bit of bright, siren-like melodic guitar tapping, another superbly muscular, propulsive, a dirty, grumbling bass line (which is prominent throughout the song), and some booming metallic guitars. At a mere one minute and ten seconds, "Buried But Breathing" is the record's shortest number; but it is nonetheless a remarkable one, thanks to its strong, darkly chugging rhythm and memorable, honest-to-god pop-punk-ish, finger-pointing shout/chant along of the title phrase.

Moving along, "Farewell Note To This City" is another huge highlight, as it is about the closest thing to a ballad Converge have ever recorded. It clocks in at just over five-minutes long, but it's still undeniably epic! And man, is it b-e-a-utiful! It features some positively gorgeous strings, killer bass sections, and more vocal variation (including whispers, nerve-damaging yells, and impressive, mournful proper singing.) It keeps you on your heals throughout its playing time because it constantly threatens to explode into chaos. And even though its energy does snowball, and it segues into heavy and angry territory (with frenetic tempo changes, fiery thrash riffs, and deft, pounding drums), "Farewell Note" ends before it gets too out-of-control. "Color Me Blood Red" returns the band to their heavy, in-your-face roots. It certainly isn't a bad tune, and it certainly rocks quite hard, but it seems less like a suitable conclusion to the album than "Farewell Note To This City" would have been.

The reissue of this album comes with four bonus tracks. The first three really intense, straight-forward and old-school hardcore-esque live cuts that are bolstered by chugging riffs. These three tracks are very raw, but their sound quality is exceptional. They are also cool because they leave in mistakes, thus helping them to sound so primal. (The two most notable ones are when a band member hits his head on the microphone stand, and when one of the guitarists' strings breaks in "Homesong," and he stops to repair it.) Finally, "Love As Arson" is a manically brutal hidden track with grindcore-worthy ferocity that tears through the speakers and rips the listener's ears clean off.

If "Petitioning The Empty Sky" has any flaws, it is that it doesn't flow well. None of the album sounds very much alike, and it just hops (rather haphazardly, too) from one song to the next. As such, this disc might initially be a challenging and bewildering listen to some, and certainly one that takes a while to get used to and warm up to. Regardless, this album is still quite friggin' amazing, and is filled with an abundance of excellent, brilliant, unique, epic, and contagious material that will not be soon or easily forgotten. A must own for all serious metalheads worldwide.

Okay so I was kinda hesitant as you'd expect when it came to buying the same record twice. But rest assured this my friends was worth it (plus the LP looks nice, first press suckers! Good things come to those that wait). Anyways, I gotta hand it to you the one thing that really makes this cd is just how much better Farewell Note to this City sounds! I'm not kidding, on the orginal record the songs is barely audible and you can barely hear the dynamics, so Farewell Note just doesn't sound as freaking epic as it does on this joint! I honestly listened to that song like 5 times straight in a row and I was super pysched, I didn't really pay to much mind to it on the orginal release but... bravo! Saddest Day didn't require way too much touching up, it does sound a bit more audible (like all the tracks do, this means you don't have to play with the volume on each song as much as you did with the orginal release) and Jake sounds a little more pronounced. Dead sounds a million times better and it's probably my favorite all around Converge track. The rest of the album is greatly improved, in fact it almost sounds like an entirely diffrent album, it's as if your hearing Petitioning for the first time all over again! Highly recommended if you already own the orginal version.

Though released years ago, and still miles above anything that the modern metalcore / hardcore scene has put out, 'Petitioning the Sky' seems to fall short of the work that Converge has put forth since then. Granted, at the time, 'Petitioning...' was up there, rivaling anything that other bands could put out (with the exception of the great Deadguy - who happens to be appropriately name dropped in the liner notes on this reissue), but in comparison to works like 'Jane Doe' and 'When Forever Comes Crashing' sounds dated and tired, lacking the ingenuity and musical progression found in later works. However with all that said, 'Petitioning the Empty Sky' is still a hell of an album and basically the template for every metalcore album since: raging guitar riffs, oddly clean sung verses, melodic chord progressions, the whole deal. I mean, "The Saddest Day" is arguably the best song that anyone having to do with the whole bare-bones hardcore / metalcore has ever put out, cathy, emotional, and brutal. On the part of the reissue, the producion is much cleaner, while still retaining its "rough around the edges" sound, the bonus song is solid, though the original artwork far more suited the record, the new packaging is decent. The clean up work on 'Petitioning the Empty Sky' is imaculate, warrenting even those who own the original to pick this up, definitely a worthy reissue.

8 / 10