WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVEW: CONVERGE'S JACOB BANNON ON HIS BAND'S NEW ALBUM AND HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH CAVE IN AND NEUROSIS

In Revolver’s December issue, we interview Converge vocalist Jake Bannon about the band’s new album Axe to Fall (Epitaph). For those of you who didn’t get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here’s the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

Photo: Matt Miller

REVOLVER How long did it take you to write this album?
JACOB BANNON There are some songs that we’ve had skeletons of since 2005, but we really sat down and started concentrating on writing for like a six-month period leading up to recording… Some people look at it as this sort of long arduous process that can take forever. But basically the day you finish the previous album, the clock starts ticking for the next album.

Is that what the writing process is like for Converge?
Not necessarily. Every album has songs that take forever to write and certain songs that come together in a matter of hours. It really depends on the song. It really depends on where you’re at psychologically when you’re working on a record. Sometimes a solution to a musical problem comes together so much easier a couple of years after the fact, or things just run really smooth. It really varies. It’s tough to really describe without getting into too much detail.

What’s the story behind the album title, Axe to Fall?
It’s one of the songs on the album and we felt that sonically, musically, lyrically—it just worked for the album. We had a variety of titles that we were playing with for months on end leading up to the release of the record. In the end it felt like it was the best one for a bunch of reasons.

On the song “Effigy,” Steve Brodsky, Adam McGrath and JR Connors of Cave In all make appearances. How did they get involved?
Yeah, that song is from those sessions, as well.

And you guys revisited it and reworked it?
Yeah, we reworked it. We’re recorded a lot of it and certain elements of it. The only thing we kept from the original session was all of the drum tracking. The original project wasn’t recorded on a boom box or anything like that. It was written and recorded in a studio. A lot of the base tracks existed. Those songs were there, so we didn’t have to wholly re-record them and start from scratch. The base was there so we recorded over it.

Adam McGrath of Cave In appeared on No Heroes, too.
I believe Adam played a solo or something on No Heroes. I wasn’t there that day but I’m pretty sure he did.

So, you guys have been involved together creatively before.
Well, we were the first show that those guys ever went to. We grew up not in the same town, but it was the same general area that we grew up in and went to high school. We were always just around each other. When we moved to the city they followed suit. Things just kind of progressed, and we all stayed close.

I think the only time we drifted apart was when they had a lot of major-label experimentation and stuff like that. Their schedule got really busy and they made a lot of business-style decisions that took them away from the original hardcore and punk community that we were a part of. Once that died down and they kind of leveled out as people we all came back to the same place. It was actually a really great experience.

One day I was sitting in our old office at Deathwish, working away at some random record, and I look up and some long-haired guy is standing in front of me. He sits in a chair next to me and is like, “Hey, what’s up?” And it took me a second, you know. I had headphones in and I was in a different world, so I kind of looked at him for a second and I was like, Oh, it’s Adam. This was maybe in like 2003. Adam came in the office and just kind of wanted to talk to me about some stuff and just set the record straight… I respected that. I was really appreciative of his honesty and his friendship, just putting it out there and talking to an old friend about stuff that he needed to talk about. It was a really positive thing. At that point our friendship sort of kicked off again and it’s been that way ever since. We don’t see each other much. I think we see JR [Connors] the most because he lives a couple of blocks from the studio and he’s also in [Converge bassist Nate Newton’s side project] Doomriders, so we see him pretty often. But the other guys, we all just live our lives. Our paths crossover. It’s great and we’re still friends but we’re just happy to be working with them in some way. They’re great people. They really are.

Steve Von Till guests on “Cruel Bloom.” It’s got a less aggressive sound than the rest of the record but still sounds really dark and heavy. Can you tell me about writing that track?
That was another song that was kicking around for a while with some different instrumentation and stuff. Kurt just had this vision of taking it to a different place. He took a few days and recorded some piano and some raw drum tracks just to see where we could take the song. He did that and presented it to us before we started fully recording the record. It was sort of interesting so we were like hey, let’s try it...I’ve known Neurosis casually for years. They were like one of the most influential bands for me as a kid.

Their third album, Souls at Zero, really changed my life when I was like 14, 15 years old. I wore out two cassette copies of that record. I remember walking home on the train tracks from work when I was a kid listening to that record over and over again. It was one of the most powerful things to me. I still listen to it at least monthly. It’s still a huge part of my life. I was lucky enough to start seeing them around then. I’ve essentially been their follower and sort of fanatical supporter since I was a teenager.

We officially met them and spent some time with them in France a few years ago, and it was funny because Scott Kelly mentioned that he remembered meeting me at like 1994 or ’95 at the Middle East. It was, like, their second Enemy of the Sun tour. They were touring with Buzzov-en and a bunch of other bands there. He actually brought it up, which I thought was really interesting, because I thought it was, like, something that I had invented in my head. It’s one of those things where so much time passes that you’re like, Did I actually have a conversation with these people?

We just kind of hit it off and became friends. We realized that in some ways we’re different animals but we’re related to each other in a lot of the same ways. We definitely have a mutual respect for each other and they realize just how important their band has been to us. Then a few months later they invited us out to play two shows in Seattle with them, and we just kind of stayed in touch since then. Kurt [Ballou, Converge’s guitarist] stayed in touch with Steve, and I’ve stayed more in touch with Scott. Steve was totally available and he was like, “Hey, I’ll be happy to contribute to that.” I gave him some rough lyrics just to give him an idea that I had for the song. He contributed a few things, changed a few things so that he’d feel more comfortable with singing it. It worked really well. I’m really happy with how the song came out.

You did the cover art for this album as you’ve done for all previous albums. What’s the concept behind the image?
I was pretty free with my overall concept with the record. I wanted to create a visual for each song that encapsulated some of the emotion of each song. I don’t want to be too literal. For example, if a song is called “Axe to Fall” I don’t like creating a literal axe falling. That does nothing for me emotionally. I experimented a lot with the repetition of imagery on this record, sort of in breaking things down in repetition, telling a story through the use of the same image and distressing it and using it in such a manner that it’s just different. Things have a kinetic feel. They feel explosive. They feel powerful. The cover itself, I just wanted to have something that felt timeless and sort of embodied the whole emotional gamut of the record, something that was explosive and powerful but also something that felt poetic and soft at the same time. It could look violent and beautiful at the same time. In a very general way I was going for that. It was also difficult because we were really trying to find an album title that worked well for us up to the last days of finishing the record, so I still had to work in a general way. I didn’t want to wind up creating something that was too literal or too specific to a title that I didn’t want to use. So, with all of that said, the balance was nice and I’m happy with how it all came out.

Interview by Valerie McQueen