“We wanted to do something grander than the typical four-piece Converge music.”That’s Converge vocalist Jacob Bannon talking about the seed of inspiration thateventually bloomed into Bloodmoon: I, the new collaborative album created by thelegendary hardcore band alongside dark songstress Chelsea Wolfe, herbandmate/writing partner Ben Chisholm and Cave In vocalist/guitarist Steve Brodsky.“I’ve been a fan of Chelsea and Ben’s work for some time,” Bannon says. “I bought theApokalypsis record from Aquarius Records in San Francisco, and Ben and I startedcommunicating here and there. He had roots in this world of music, so it started to makesense that we could all work together in some way.”“Ben introduced me to Converge when we started playing music together in 2009,”Wolfe says. “A couple of years later, we saw that Converge had put Apokalypsis on ayear-end list, so we were totally fanning out about that. When they reached out to Benabout performing some Converge songs with new arrangements, I said, ‘I want in onthat...’ And it seems like they were happy to have me along.”Fast forward to a 2016 European tour and a rapturously received appearance atRoadburn that saw all seven musicians performing revamped Converge material.Overnight, what had started as a mutual admiration society had become one of themost formidable musical constellations in recent memory. “We felt like there wasenough energy in the live collaboration to actually create new music together,”Converge guitarist and Bloodmoon: I producer Kurt Ballou explains. “It just took a fewyears to free up the time to get together.”The musicians descended upon Ballou’s God City Studios in Salem, Massachusetts, towork on material in late 2019. Future sessions were planned for 2020,but then thepandemic hit. The rest of Bloodmoon: I was recorded remotely, though you’d neverknow it. “I wanted a record that breathed like a band playing together in a room, even ifit wasn’t possible during this time period,” Ballou says. “It feels likewe achieved that.”Harrowing and atmospheric, triumphant and melodious, Bloodmoon: I is Converge asyou’ve never heard them before. It’s Chelsea Wolfe and Ben Chisholm as you’ve neverheard them before. It’s Steve Brodsky as you’ve almost never heard himbefore—afterall, he was a member of Converge in the late ’90s and played bass on 1998’s WhenForever Comes Crashing.“It’s been a real treat to see one of my favorite bands continue to do cool stuff and breakthe molds of what’s considered hardcore and punk,” Brodsky says of Bloodmoon: I. “It’sa very rare thing in this kind of music to go an experimental route and challenge thequote-unquote ‘rules’ of what’s been laid out beforehand—and do it successfully.”

As Bannon points out, Bloodmoon: I has been a long time coming—longer, even, thanthe 2016 shows would indicate. The members of Converge—Ballou, Bannon, bassistNate Newton, and drummer Ben Koller—tipped their hand ever so slightly with therelease of 2009’s Axe To Fall, which featured a lengthy list of guest musicians, includingmembers of Neurosis, Entombed, and Genghis Tron—not to mention Brodsky andsome of his Cave In bandmates.“Kurt and I have been talking about trying to do something more collaborative even priorto the Axe To Fall album,” Bannon reveals. “For years, there was talk of doing ‘Con-Cave’ or ‘Verge-In,’ a Converge and Cave In supergroup, and some versions of thosesongs ended up on Axe To Fall. But this is different.”Thrilling in its apocalyptic grandeur, Bloodmoon: I is a collaborative work in every way—to the point where Wolfe, Bannon, and Brodsky found themselves writing lyrics for eachother. “That’s one of the keys to the album,” Ballou points out. “Sometimes when there’sa collaborative group, it just sounds like such-and-sucha person doing the thing they doin their band while the other people are doing the things they do in their bands. So forJake to write lyrics for Chelsea or for Chelsea to write lyrics for Steve, it forces eachperson to approach the vocals in a way that’s unique to the project.”Holding down the fort at GodCity while tracks came in from across the country, Ballouand Bannon were often surprised by the songs Wolfe chose to sing on. “I was surprisedas well,” she confirms. “The project stretched my vocals in new ways. It’s so differentthan what I normally sing over that I was able to open up and be vulnerable with myvocals. I feel like I also heard that with Jake and Steve. It became one of the most funrecording experiences I’ve had in a long time.”“As someone who’s been making loud music with the same guys for a long time, addingnew elements to what we’re doing and having a new version of the band is veryexciting,” Bannon enthuses. “Our dynamics are pushing and pulling in all differentdirections on this record, and I find that to be creatively rewarding.”Indeed, the more hectic and seemingly Converge-esque material like “Lord of Liars” orthe Cave In-like “Failure Forever” quickly veer into unexpected territory as Bannontrades vocal parts with Wolfeon the former and Brodsky on the latter. And even thosetracks are outliers on an album that can’t be pinned down as the work of any one of itscreators. Epic opener “Blood Moon” and the profoundly haunting “Coil” might be thebest examples of this. They mark an indelible and climactic collision of artists working atthe height of their collective powers.“With a project like this, egos could have really flared up,” Brodsky says with a laugh.“But I feel like everyone just kept the music in mind and wantedto do what’s best for thesong. We’ve all done this enough to know that if we don’t get our way every time adecision needs to be made, we’ll be okay. We’ll get our time in the sun at some point.”

“It’s hard to find new ways to be creative, but I think we’ve been good at sort of forcingourselves to do that,” Ballou says. “And this project is no exception. Getting Steve andChelsea and Ben to contribute with us, we were kind of playing musical Cupid with all ofthem. But we had a feeling that if we got thisgroup of people together, somethingpowerful would come out of it.