Customer Reviews

You Fail Me

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anybody who knows anything (which, regrettably, seems to be an increasingly minute percentage of the population) knows Converge are on the short list of the world's finest heavy bands, and this latest release should only solidify their already lofty reputation. While slightly less brilliant than its predecessor "Jane Doe," "You Fail Me" is an effortless continuation of this band's signature metal/hardcore/noisecore sound. With bands like Candiria, the Dillinger Escape Plan, and Neurosis unveiling some pretty radical makeovers on their recent new releases, Converge have instead done an admirable job of sticking with what they're good at without running in
place, a difficult achievement indeed. Just in case anyone needed another reminder of how terrible all the legions of nu-metal clones are, this one should suffice pretty well.

First of all, just in case anyone doubted it, "You Fail Me" proves once and for all that Converge are virtually flawless in terms of pure skill. Although his voice does take on a slightly milder intonation every now and then, Jacob Bannon's demented shriek still easily places him among the best vocalists in all of heavy music. Kurt Ballou does the work of two or three people on guitar, churning out an unpredictable, ever-shifting assault of churning riffs and screeching noises. Top marks for this album, though, would have to go to Ben Koller, whose drumming is both relentlessly maniacal and surgically precise. Just listen to him hit about 5,000 times in three minutes on "Last Light" and you should have a pretty good idea what I mean.

What really elevates these guys above the plain, though, is the
craftsmanship and sheer emotion they put into their music. Sure, they don't make it a point to beat you over the head with their feelings like some lame emo band, but you can still feel the emotion in every note of the vocals and music here. And although they typically shift tempo every ten seconds or so, the songs on this album are still imbued with a combination of epic sweep and righteous grooves that's almost impossible to find anywhere. Indeed, no band working right now combines aggression, musicality, and technicality as well as Converge: not Meshuggah, not the Dillinger Escape Plan, not Mastodon, nobody (of course, this is not to say the aforementioned
bands don't rule, only that Converge do so in their own distinctive manner). After all, you've got to respect a band that can follow the bludgeoning doom of "You Fail Me" with the atmospheric acoustic tune "In Her Shadow," and then jump right back into the fray with the warp-speed thrash of "Eagles
Become Vultures."

So, yeah. This album rules all creation, and must be added to your collection immediately. Since Meshuggah's "I" is a really long song rather than an actual album, "You Fail Me" has jumped into the front-runner's spot for my coveted "Album of the year" designation. This CD is sure to offend normal, well-adjusted people everywhere, which in and of itself is sufficient to make it a classic.

First and foremost: Converge are not an accessible band. I had and hated their previous relase, Jane Doe, for two years before I was once again encouraged to listen to it by a friend. Even for veterans of hardcore/grind/thrash/death/doom/metal, Converge takes more than a few listens to get into. So, if these flowery reviews have inspired you to purchase this album, I would strongly encourage you to be patient, and to listen carefully to what you're hearing.

This album is tremendous. Converge have once again managed to stay ten steps ahead of the current hardcore and metal trends, which were in many ways started by them in the first place. This is my favorite Converge album, and has remained my favorite heavy album of all time since its release. It has the furious pace of all their previous work, as well as the awesome dirge of Doe; so fans of both elements are sure to be pleased. Guitarist Kurt Ballou has traded in the blurring, needly riffs for a chunkier, lower, chord-based heaviness (although the high end riffage is still present and lovely) in the wake of the departure of former Converge guitarist Aaron Dalbec, but you'll never miss them. Bassist Nate Newton carries on in much the same fashion as Doe, accenting the wonderful riffs and rhythms with a low, scratchy, abrasive tone that is one of the best I've heard in years - his work on the title track is absolutely incredible. Vocalist Jacob Bannon continues to deliver his trademark panther shriek, this time with a little less distortion, but still every bit as intense and energetic as Jane Doe and all previous releases. But the member who stands out most this time around is definitely Ben Koller on the drums. In every single song on the entire album, with the exception of In Her Shadow, Ben destroys his entire kit in the most beautiful way you will ever hear.

This entire album is top knotch, but there are a few parts that I think deserve special attention, especially if you aren't all that into Converge in the first place:

The entirety of Blackcloud. The drum progression during the verse parts will drop your jaw, and the many time changes in the breakdown will make you never want to play the drums again. If you think you're good at drums, never listen to this song.

The stampede breakdown of Dropout. One of the best moments on the album, and the coolest, most original breakdown on the cd.

Heartless. This song has several short buildups in it, but you'll want to rewind the final one over and over and over. Seriously incredible.

You Fail Me. This is the best sludge Converge has done. Jake's delivery in the first three words ("YOU FAIL ME") is sure to summon shivers from the deepest part of your spine. Listen carefully to this song. Every few measures something changes: either a new layer is added or an existing part is tweaked, and it just gets better and better. At the end of the song, you can hear Jake whispering "thinking we fail you, you fail yourself" under the yells and screams of Kurt and Nate. Epic.

These are just subtle moments of the cd that I think are often overlooked by listeners; the rest of the cd is brilliant too. All these pretty reviews aren't just bullshit. This album is ridiculous in the best way possible. Go buy it!

It's hard to imagine a Converge album that is an outright disappointment. Even at their worst, they rock a million times harder than your average metalcore band. A lot of people claim that You Fail Me is a disappointing follow-up to their masterpiece, Jane Doe, but I personally couldn't disagree more. You Fail Me stands on its own as a fine addition to the Converge canon.

"First Light," a short, Godspeed You Black Emperor!-esque instrumental opener, and "Last Light," are a fantastic one-two punch to open You Fail Me. "Last Light" has a positively colossal sound and a great sense of dynamics. Jacob Bannon begins the song in an oddly conventional sounding yell until the breakdown kicks in and he revitalizes his trademark venom-spewing shriek. Goosebumps every time. The next four tracks are all great Converge cuts with the chaos, speed, and volume cranked up to 11. It's at the title track where You Fail Me begins to take a noticeably different turn.

"You Fail Me" is a sinister dirge set at an excruciatingly (in a good way) slow pace. It runs for over five minutes (not at all weird for Converge considering Jane Doe's title track broke 11) and the atmosphere is completely suffocating. "In Her Shadow" is the other "ballad" on You Fail Me, and features acoustic guitar, piano, and Bannon at his creepiest. Despite the aforementioned instrumental elements, the track is not weak at all, but rather is highly effective due to its entirely unsettling tone and slowly building (but never really climaxing) structure. "In Her Shadow" stretches for over six minutes, and along with the title track make up a third of You Fail Me's running time. The tracks may seem like fish out of water, but I think their irregularity makes the album all the more dynamic.

The album's last four tracks aren't as strong as the first two-thirds of the record, but still round out You Fail Me nicely. Sure, it's technically flawed and not as brilliant as Jane Doe (if you don't own that, buy it IMMEDIATELY), but You Fail Me is still an amazing effort and yet another testament to the greatness of Converge. Scrap your Atreyu and Bleeding Through records and get hip to the real deal, punks.

Converge comes from the late `90's pack of experimental hardcore, sometimes called noisecore or metalcore, that is quite impressive. When I compared Converge to their peers Neurosis, Deadguy, Botch, Coalesce, Cave In, and Bloodlet, I initially thought they were inferior.
Converge had everything going for them: great artwork on their album covers, fan loyalty built by touring, powerful personal lyrics, technical and original music. There was only one thing that put me off which was Jacob Bannon's vocal sound. He sounded like a black metal singer being strangled. It was enough to annoy me and dismiss them altogether. That was a mistake.

Converge's material takes several close listens before you can pick out the stylistic mixtures and brilliant shifts. It all comes together for an intensely psychotic experience. The whole songs are emotional breakdowns, not just certain parts. The vocal style still isn't my favorite, but I couldn't imagine them any other way.
"You Fail Me" is an album like no other. Chaos is still the rule, but when they hit something close to a groove it's pretty sweet. To keep it unpredictable, they throw in an Old Man Gloom style acoustic part to keep you on your toes. Bannon even has a moment at the beginning of the album where he lays off his signature shriek and uses a more natural approach which I hope to hear more of in the future.

Converge is an acquire taste, even for hardcore veterans, but once you acquire that taste you'll see what all the hype is about. Their whole catalog is great, but they seem to grow into something more unique with each album. Start with "You Fail Me" and work your way down.

Converge's previous album "jane doe" was the album that kept my faith that hardcore wasn't a completely spent force back in the dark days of 2001. Here was an album which was a direct descendent of Siege's shrill thrash-core and Rorschach's complex and brutal metal-core but which explored the possibilities of texture and elegant beauty in blistering metallic-hardcore; a dense, heterogeneous, aggressive and indefatigable wall of sound which somehow manages to sound both human and organic. The hardcore "loveless" as some folks have validly called it.

As i'd placed "jane doe" on such a pedestal i was wary to purchase "you fail me" as i thought it just wouldn't and couldn't compare. Judging from what i've read and discussions with friends of mine a lot of people felt this way. I guess i/we thought they couldn't top the previous album and that they'd either bring in the keyboards or, as so many of the other bands in this genre do, cram the music so full of tempo changes and that it ends up stifling it.

But they didn't. After approaching "you fail me" with some trepidation i found myself enthralled by the second listen. Instead of trying to turn into the gotdamn Mars Volta or regressing back into mundane mosh-metal breakdowns Converge here took a step sidewards and have remained decidedly hardcore which is one thing i've always liked about these guys. It's still a dense yet sharp blitzkrieg of sheer aggression and pastoral beauty but here they've developed an almost sleazy edge. A few songs sound more akin to a herculean version of Swing Kids than any of their current metal-core peers and the acoustic guitar strumming and female backing vocals of the sultry "in her shadows", the centerpiece of the album alongside the grinding grandiose title track, is unlike anything you've ever heard from Converge before. Dare i say it's almost a ballad? It's the juxtaposition of these two songs placed together which sum up who Converge are right now and why none of the other bands in the genre are even playing the same sport as them.

Sure, "you fail me" might not be as epic as "jane doe" but it's still collosal enough that you can find yourself living inside it. What's more, though, is that's it's as good as "jane doe" in that's it's better paced, the songwriting is a touch more convalescent and it's an easier listen. Why, and this may shock noise addicts, it's almost fun to listen to. Imagine that..? If you're still umming and ahhing on whether this will live up to "jane doe" then kill yer prior expectations, purchase this and prepare yourself for another Converge classic that achieves the same overall result but, this time, asks some different questions before reaching it.

I have well over 1,000 CD's in my collections spanning just about every genre imaginable and hundreds of years (hxc, punk, black metal, classical, world music, electronic noise, etc). I've been following Converge since around 1996. I'm a huge fan of everything that I have ever heard from them. I think a lot of Converge fans did not expect them to top Jane Doe. They did. Without any question in my mind this is one of the most powerful records ever recorded. PERIOD.

Converge is NOT metal. YOU FAIL ME is not some blend of styles. If you want to understand HxC you've got to understand it's need to express what it feels, raw and pure, and as it is, to encompass the human experience in a sonic onslaught. A good HxC band will use any weapon I it's arsenal to convey what it needs to. Converge have carved one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art, proving that they are true masters of brining emotion into sonic form.

Jane Doe was the brutal exposition of anger and truth and raw emotions hoping that, in their release, solace would be found. YOU FAIL ME is the sober realization that life is, and that it will go on, and that the endless questions of life must reach a new level, and the search for meaning is just now beginning.

Drop you biases.

I don't care if your into HxC, or Metal, or Classical, or Folk, or country, or listening to your car engine... BUY this album. Listen to it until you understand it. It might sound like noise the first listen, or the first 50 listens. But keep listening. Keep thinking about the words. KEEP PUSHING ON. This album will unfold before you and grab your soul and show you a life much bigger than you ever dreamed.

Albums do not get better than this. MUSIC does not get better than this. PERIOD.

I'd say that this album is even better than Jane Doe, which speaks ALOT for it. The guitar riff at the end of Drop Out is one of the coolest riffs ever, next to Saddest Day, for Converge. YOU MUST BUY THIS!

OK, I just don't get it. If I'm missing something, then please somebody set me straight. I read review after review about Converge and how they're the greatest thing since sliced toast. What am I not hearing that you all are?

Based on Amazon reviews, I go out and grab No Heros. And it's ok. I like it, but I don't love it. A few months later, I grab You Fail Me and it's the same feeling for me. They're OK but I'm not finding that unearthly brilliance that some seem to see in Converge. Am I listening to the wrong albums? If I check out Jane Doe will it hit me? "Oh, holy crap, these guys are unbelievable!! I get it now!!" What am I doing wrong here?

Somehow, everytime I hit Dillinger Escape Plan on amazon, the website does everything in its power to lead me to Converge, that's how I found Converge in the first place but it doesn't strike me as a logical match. You have DEP with their finesse and technical execution ... and then there's Converge. As far as I can tell, the Converge method of music is EVERYTHING LOUD AT ONCE ALL THE TIME NEVER RELENT UNTIL ABOUT TRACK 8. Guitars? Play them on 10. Bass? 10 also. Drums? Maybe 9.5. Vocals? Yeah, shred your larynx at 10 also. Variation? Nah. Just have everyone playing at 10 all the time, push people's car speakers to the very limit, keep it up all through the CD. Everyone in the band, set your amps at 10, 11 if you have the Spinal Tap special edition Marshals, and just bash out chord after chord, note after note.

And don't get me wrong. There's a place for that. If you had my job, you'd know there as a dire need for that once in a while. Yeah, I like their music ... I JUST DON'T SEE WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT IT. Everytime I throw in Colors by Between the Buried and Me, there's that "holy crap" feeling of amazement. I just don't get that with Converge and therein lies the problem. I just feel like I've been promised that kind of amazement and Converge's music just has not given me that. I guess I just need to drop those exceedingly high expectations and enjoy it the way I enjoy most albums. But from what people wrote, I half expected something with the complexity of Lateralus but that's more than an apples to oranges comparison. That would be like comparing apples to pork.

In a year that saw more than it's fair share of good metal and hardcore releases, Converge's "You Fail Me" stood above not only those in its respected style of music, but in all musical genres as well. For a band following their epic masterpiece, "Jane Doe", you'd never know that they were coming off such an accomplishment, because "You Fail Me" is every bit as impressive as its predecessor. In fact on some levels "You Fail Me" might even eclipse the previously mentioned album. What's more important is Converge's consistency and how they continue to put out album after album of extraordinary material, yet are very underappreciated by the mass public and music listeners alike. If you haven't been warned by now, Converge is a very acquired taste, but trust me once you acquire it, you'll understand why everyone sends such high praises to these guys. If you were ever a Converge fan, "You Fail Me" is a dream come true.

I don't really know what to say about these four in terms of musical ability that hasn't been said before. Jacob Bannon's voice is one of the most distinctive and destructive in the hardcore and metal worlds, and has continued to only get better with every album that Converge has put out. He has toned down the vocal distortions and effects a bit, but you'd never be able to tell. Kurt Ballou continues to be one of the most innovative guitar players in heavy music, with his frantic, mathematical precisions on "Drop Out" and "Hope Street", but also shows how intricate he can become on grooves like the album's amazing title track. Nate keeps up the intense low end of the band, where few others would even be able to withstand Converge's oblivion. Oh and my God the drums. Listening to Ben Keller behind the kit is every fan of extreme music's dream, because he leaves no part of it untouched. Every time I hear a song from this band, I continue to be amazed at how he can constantly create some of the most complex and astonishing drum beats I've ever heard.

Even if I wanted to tell you my favorite tracks on this release I couldn't, because I would end up listing every single one of them. They really are that good, and there is no weak link in the album, anywhere. I especially like the interesting vocal style Jacob experiments with on the second track "Last Light", which sounds something like an old school punk/hardcore style. "Black Cloud" and "Heartless" are vintage Converge mayhem, and "You Fail Me" shows how the band's experimental noise leanings have furthered since "When Forever Comes Crashing". The biggest surprise though has got to be "In Her Shadow", the haunting, acoustic/experimental piece which is something totally different from what Converge is known for doing. The vocals are barely distinguishable, and for the first 3 minutes of the song, you are very much subdued by Kurt's eerie, atmospheric guitar playing, until Ben's drums begin to slowly creep in, in the background, and add an even further distinctive creepiness to the tune. "Hanging Moon" bows out the album with the same sort of vocal experimentation that Jacob tried on the first track, and it works fairly well here also. The record flows very nicely, just barely hitting the 35 minute mark.

If you don't know who Converge is by now, then I don't know where you've been for the last five years. If you're new to them, I'd recommend starting here or with their masterpiece "Jane Doe", then working your way backwards. Every album they've done is excellent, but they've gotten increasingly better with each record they've put out. Chances are if you're reading this though, you probably already have some kind of semi-interest in the band, so that should be no problem. To you I would say pick up this album immediately, because it is undoubtably the finest release that 2004 saw, and that was no small feat. In a year which saw fine efforts from The Dillinger Escape Plan, Killswitch Engage, Zao and many others, "You Fail Me", rightfully took it's place at the top of the pack. The definition of beautifully destructive music.

Converge have done it again. Almost unaffected by all of the pressure to somehow follow up the amazing beast that was Jane Doe, they managed to put out a killer record. How did they do it? Well, they released You Fail Me, the most brutal hardcore album of 2004.

The album starts of with "First Light", a minute long guitar insturmental that reminds me of an oncoming storm. At this point, you can tell that Converge have not lost it one bit. "Last Light" starts out with Jacob shouting 'I need you to be the strength of widows, and soul survivors', making sure that you're properly scared before the track even properly begins. The song takes a total backwards turn and starts doing what Converge do best, shredding and screaming. The track stops mid-beat, shifting into the most amazing breakdown I've heard in a while, after which the song abruptly ends after a screeching rift. It'll be hard to not play this track on repeat over and over, but trust me, the rest of the album is well worth it.

The next four tracks just pummel you for the better part of 8 1/2 minutes. The old Converge shines here, but every song has a unique aspect to it, which is basically the breakdown. The bass starts showing well in songs like "Black Cloud" a lot, which is good because Bass is way too ignored in Hardcore. After all of this turmoil, your ears will ache, so what do converge do? They proceed to scare the living bejesus out of you.

The title track is one of the scariest thing's I've heard in a while. At 5 1/2 minutes, this is a pretty freaking rough listen, but very rewarding. The lyrics are powerful as ever, and the guitar playing is crisp and clear. Oh my God, after this track, make sure to not to take any pills for the next hour, because you'll end up murdering someone.

Time for my favorite part of this album, the unexpected dirge! Seriously, what the hell was going through their minds when they made this track? It's undeniably a step in a new direction for Convere, but could you ever see this happening? I sure couldn't, but this track set me straight. This is the most beautiful thing Converge have ever done, next to "Pheonix in Flight" off of Jane Doe. This masterpiece drags on for 6 minutes, then somehow manages to transition into the brutal "Eagles Become Vultures".

If you've somehow made it to the last 4 tracks without totally flipping out, I congratulate you. Although I could've hoped for something a little less damaging on the old ears, Converge most definitely deliver here. Four more brutal tracks of agony end this whopper of an album.

Easily one of the top 5 records of 2004. Converge are still going strong, and after quite a few listens, I'm still far from finishing finding all that there is to discover on the latest and greatest from the best Hardcore band of the 21st century. Happy listening!