Jane Doe (Music #4)

Converge's Jane Doe is considered by many a keystone: it catapulted Converge to the forefront of a genre they were sort of creating as they were going, along with well-known bands Botch and Dillinger Escape Plan (both of which released albums in 1999 that heralded Jane Doe).  The style is some sort of super frenetic hardcore punk variation, typically considered "mathcore" or "math metal."  I would argue that it's more hardcore (hence "core"), as it fits into the punk aesthetic, the "DIY" scene, and so on.

To understand Jane Doe, a little background info is important:
It's the first album in which singer/lyricist/artist Jacob Bannon truly came into his own as an artist.  Here's the cover to Jane Doe.  He has used this blend of medias in the artwork of several other bands, as well as each of the following releases, including this year's forthcoming "All That We Love We Leave Behind."  Bannon is vegetarian and straight edge.  He's said he likes small, intense venues over large ones.

2001 was a crazy year for artistic music, having releases by Tool ("Lateralus"), Opeth ("Blackwater Park"), Radiohead ("Amnesiac"), Bjork ("Vespertine"), The Strokes ("Is This It?"), Jay-Z ("The Blueprint") White Stripes ("White Blood Cells"), and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds ("No More Shall We Part"), among many other lesser-knowns (Unwound's "Leaves Turn Inside You", The Microphones' "The Glow, pt.2", Neurosis' "A Sun That Never Sets", Fugazi's "The Argument", Gillian Welch's "Time The Revelator", Stars of the Lid's "The Tired Sounds Of", Daft Punk's "Discovery", along with many, many others).

Personally, I'd been following Toolshed like a hawk, waiting for the newest release by Tool for the past several years.  Little did I know that I'd listen to the album non-stop for the better part of two years, before joining a ska band and creating a hardcore band of my own, events that would obliterate my music boundaries.  Needless to say, my first experience with Converge, outside of snippets I'd hear, here and there, was seeing them in concert in 2004 at the Meow Meow, in Portland's industrial SE side (it used to be the B Complex).  It was a show with Cave In and Between the Buried and Me, which I was more excited to see.  Converge completely blew me away though, I must say, and I've been a huge supporter ever since.  I don't listen to their music nearly as much as I'd like though, and I'm trying to rectify that.