Converge Presents: Saddest Day 2026

It never ceases to amaze me how the things we initially dismiss, overlook, don't notice can become the most important and meaningful to us and our lives. The first time I saw Converge was in 1996 with Deadguy, Coalesce and a number of other bands whose names are now lost to memory in a Legion Hall in a rundown part of Buffalo, NY. I'd like to say they changed my life that night but they didn't - not that night, anyway. However, there was something about the way their rail-thin singer (Jacob Bannon) threw himself without regard into his performance, and the audience, and glimpses of the more than then-typical Victory Records mosh in their music that spoke of things to come. If you told me that band (Converge, I would discover later while buying Deadguy merch) would become one of the most important to not only myself but to aggressive music and its various scenes and factions, I would have cracked a smile, at the very least. Funny, how things turn out. Formed in the winter of 1990 in Boston, MA, during the rise and subsequent fall of the legendary Boston hardcore scene, Converge are unarguably one of the most important bands in the history of aggressive music.