Video: Converge - "Aimless Arrow"
. . .
Above is the music video for Converge’s “Aimless Arrow.” The song comes from their new album All We Love We Leave Behind, which will come out on October 9 via Epitaph Records.
. . .
Metal has lots of ‘institutions’—long-running bands that still churn out fan-pleasing albums. Maybe they’ve had a slip-up here and there, and maybe they took a break for a while, but they keep the fire burning high. Iron Maiden is an institution. So is Slayer. Death metal has Immolation; black metal has Darkthrone.
By comparison, hardcore has relatively few institutions. Punk rock is a young man’s game. Time is not kind to its best bands; most do their business in ten years or less and then dissolve.
Converge, however, is on the verge of becoming an institution. (Perhaps the metal in their musical DNA grants them longevity.) The band formed 22 years ago and is about to drop its eighth album. They have released a genre-defining classic (Jane Doe) and have toured the world many times. Converge has nothing left to prove; at this point, they’re just refining the formula.
. . .
“Aimless Arrow” and its accompanying video speak to Converge’s latest round of tweaks. Though the band fetishizes live performance, its members themselves are conspicuously absent from the video, aside from vocalist Jake Bannon’s cameo. Instead, scattered images pinwheel before us—an arrow whipping through a forest, a child wandering an abandoned town, a figure convulsing on a bed. Director Max Moore’s jumbled cuts prevent us from focusing on any single scene, but the washed-out color palette gives the video a dreamlike wistfulness.
The video mirrors the song’s mood. “Aimless Arrow” takes it easy on the ears, by Converge standards. Bannon has throttled way back from his former squawk; he sounds more sad than angry now. You can even make out fragmented lyrics—a far cry from the Jane Doe days, when you couldn’t understand him even with the lyrics in your hands. The rhythms are still lopsided—too many beats here, too few beats there—but the riffs favor consonance over dissonance.
But Converge remains incredibly athletic, even as they approach middle age. Ben Koller is one of metal and hardcore’s most underrated drummers—few players can marry restlessness and propulsiveness as he does. Guitarist Kurt Ballou and bassist Nate Newton sling each other around in a wild dance that only syncs up at the song’s end: a classic Converge shout-along refrain. The years have softened this band, but not unkindly.
. . .
