Converge – Jane Doe

AC: It’s a huge album for a very good reason. For me, in terms of that style it’s never been bettered, and it doesn’t have that much preceding it, either. You can hear them working towards it in the records they put out before this one, and you can hear a lot of people ripping it off still today. This was a properly foundational record for me, as it is for a lot of people. Although it scared me when I was really young. The first two tracks are really in your face before it gets more spacey and weird. It took me a while to get into it. I’ll never forget the time that my cousin set the opening track as my alarm one morning without telling me.

I still listen to it fairly regularly. I really love it because you can tell that all the people playing in the band are into a lot of other music; I think one of the biggest problems with metal, punk and hardcore is that they’re too self-referential. Death metal is the worst. Within five seconds of hearing something you know exactly what this band is going to sound like for the next hour or so. Whereas when other influences come to the foreground, for me where I get interested. This record is about as good as you can get. The production’s fantastic. It's really raw, it’s really heavy, and it's really catchy. Catchiness in the songwriting is also important to me. It takes a lot of risks, and it feels very honest as well. More than 20 years after I first heard it, I'm still not bored by it.