Jane Doe

Fuck yes! At last! A thousand thanks to the user who thought of selecting this hardcore / metalcore masterpiece -- not only a game changer for the genre, but most of all a record that slaps so hard and rings so true from start to finish it has now become a cult album for fans of extreme music styles everywhere. A few more words to that user... First, I hope you're getting better sleep since that review for Pixies' *Surfer Rosa*. I like how some of your reviews are so confessional, by the way, even though I have to admit a couple of those short confessions made me worry about you at times... Please be OK, Rylee, if you don't mind me calling you by your first name... Because you deserve to be fucking OK, you feel me?, if only because you have had the impeccable taste of selecting Converge's *Jane Doe*... Honestly, and except for that Modern Life Is War LP, the other metalcore / hardcore albums chosen for the users list so far can directly go to the garbage can for all I care! I agree with you, *Jane Doe* is 'the one', period. Personal music tastes aside, what I really want to say to you now, Rylee, is that you deserve to be happy as a person. The words you're leaving in this generator suggest you are a sensitive and very interesting human being, and I sincerely hope there are people around you that you can talk to when things get a little dark. I'm pretty sure the conversations you and they can have together would be great or inspiring... Please just leave one extra review since the one you last posted at the end of June 2026, so that we know you're doing OK. And please don't take this as me trying to intrude on your privacy. Whatever led you to write those sorts of confessional takes -- as an exercise in style, or as a way to let off steam / relieve the pressure -- you are using this generator in a manner I had not witnessed before, and now I'm thinking "yeah, why not? Why not using this niche 1001 Albums thing as a more straightforward way to express ourselves in this sick, sad, alienated world?" You being you, Rylee, you're inciting me to take a chance and stop the whole obsessional "I need to describe music as best as I can" thing for a short while. You are encouraging me to reveal myself beyond that. My name's Cyril, by the way. Nice to meet you. Maybe one day we'll talk together, who knows? In the meantime, I still feel the need to say a few words about *Jane Doe*. First, let me just point out how fitting it is that someone who is unafraid to express very personal feelings picks this record. Because, for all we know, it looks like the lyrics on this particular Converge LP have emerged from a similar urge experienced by frontman / songwriter Jacob Bannon -- probably one that happened after the collapse of a failed relationship, when all you can do is pick up the pieces and try to make sense out of them. The urgent need to explore the psychological aftermath of such an event indeed seeps everywhere in this record. Yet, interestingly, Bannon also intentionally resisted turning the album into a transparent diary. He’s repeatedly described Converge records as “soul-searching” and emotionally driven rather than conceptual exercises. I don't want to compare what can't really be compared here, yet I can sense that type of "soul searching" in Rylee's words on this generator. There too, what we have is not exactly a private diary turned public. It's more like self-contained vignettes describing a mood or a state of mind. As for the title of the LP itself, “Jane Doe”, it seems to function less as a specific woman than as a symbolic absence -- an anonymous figure onto whom grief, resentment, guilt, longing, and alienation can be projected. Bannon has spoken about wanting the now iconic imagery of the album's artwork (made by him) to create a ghost-like, universal figure rather than a portrait of one identifiable person. That ambiguity is probably part of why the record has endured: the emotional specificity is intense, but the narrative specifics are withheld. You clearly sense *Jane Doe* is a break-up album at its core, but Bannon tends to frame those experiences as internal states rather than accusations toward another person. Even when the record sounds furious at someone else, there’s usually an undercurrent of self-disgust mixed into it. That’s one reason the album avoids feeling like revenge catharsis; it sounds more like somebody watching themselves disintegrate in real time. One interesting detail: for years the cover figure was treated as an anonymous abstraction itself, consistent with the “Jane Doe” concept, but Bannon later acknowledged that the visual source material partly came from a fashion photograph of French model Audrey Marnay that he transformed through collage and mixed-media manipulation. "Converge, we need to talk,' Marnay went online when she found out about the whole thing decades later (that subsequent conversation was kept private, and I'm pretty sure Marnay went out of it convinced of the band's good intentions). But whether before or after that small revelation, Bannon emphasized that the intent had always been to erase individuality and create an archetypal, “relatable and stoic” figure rather than depict a real person. And said "archetypal" aura looms large over the complete artistic success of this record, and this, not only for its visuals. The music in *Jane Doe* is indeed particularly well-designed for the exploration of such "difficult" emotions related to damaging life experiences -- if only because few hardcore / metalcore albums sound as completely unraveled as this one... “Concubine”, “Fault and Fracture,” and "Distance And Meaning" are probably the most intense opening trio of songs ever put to tape in the genre, for instance -- a constant mutilation of guitar riffs and drum blasts, where subliminal yet oh-so-effective hooks still manage to insert themselves in your soul like so many micro-earworms. Ben Koller's drumming punctures abysmal holes into your senses. Jacob Bannon’s vocals arrive in panicked bursts that barely resemble language anymore. Kurt Ballou's riffing (here still complemented by Aaron Dalbec's second layer of guitars) evokes the destructive rampage a beast of the Apocalypse would trigger once you liberate it from its biblical cage. The whole thing lands with a physical force that's unmatched to this day. And there's a restless, almost free-jazz dimension to the unhinged manner the metalcore proceedings are performed -- less like a collection of violent songs than a single emotional hemorrhage, where the violence of each cut bleeds into the next seamlessly. After such a relentless barrage of noise in the first leg of the album, you could expect that even die-hard fans of the metal / hxc styles would quickly experience listener fatigue. Yet what keeps the album from becoming monotonous is also the careful, almost surgical use of subtle tonal shifts at key points of the tracklist. Introduced by an intricate and suspenseful interplay between Ballou's crunch and Nate Newton's ominous bassline, fourth song "Hell To Pay" switches gears to a slower, swampier sort of heavy bluesy noise-rock, not so far from the one of The Jesus Lizard. “Homewrecker” then returns to the initial mayhem, but with a somewhat more hypnotic drive at the heart of it. "The Broken Vow" jumps to a mathcore middle section bringing quite cerebral flavors to the metal acrobatics. And “Heaven in Her Arms” stretches out the tension instead of releasing it, letting the guitars hang in these ugly, unresolved shapes before collapsing again. Then you have the mesmerizing near-instrumental "Phoenix In Flight", one of the most cinematic things Converge has ever put to tape. I wish the director of a sci-fI film could stumble upon this fabulous track one day and decide to include in the soundtrack for their movie. Here's another one of those pivotal tonal shifts in the album, where the band seem to indeed take flight over vast expanses of lava-molten land, in a near-post-rock move that never dilutes the aggressive edge found everywhere in the record. Matthew Ellard's production chops also transcend those complex yet hypnotic soundscapes displaying a very "progressive" mindset. The whole cut conveys the majesty of magnetic wings of fire, first slowly spreading, then flapping their way into ember skies in a manner that's as ominous as it is elegant. A sound engineer himself, equally responsible for the production of *Jane Doe*, Kurt Ballou surely took notes here. The damn bird suddenly self-combusts in the short, blunt, and ugly "Phoenix In Flames" in yet another 180-degree turn. "Thaw" then returns to claustrophobic metalcore aesthetics for a run that's more akin to a marathon than a sprint this time around, until the postponed liberation of its chorus finally surges. Finally, there's "Jane Doe" -- the capper and title track — eleven minutes of desperate twists and turns oscillating between slow-burning angst and sudden catharsis. Converge here abandon the compact fury of the earlier songs for something that's even more devastating, building slowly through repetition, noise, and absence until the entire album seems to dissolve in front of you, just like the shadow of the woman gracing the cover of the LP. That last epic track reframes everything before it: the rage of “Concubine,” the bitterness of “Hell to Pay,” the delirium-inducing spirals of "Phoenix In Flight"'... A suffocating grief seems to explode frame by frame in this long piece, in keeping with the undertones suggested by the title of both the song and album. The song's chorus does not only sound devastatingly painful, but also perversely elated, a tour de force adding to all the paradoxical emotions the record can elicit. This closer is, simply put, a Sistine Chapel for the damned, as harrowing as it is darkly beautiful. Very few hardcore records feel this emotionally exposed. *Jane Doe* remains one of the rare extreme music albums clearly suggesting it cost the people who made it something permanent. And the word "permanent" also applies to the long shadow cast by the LP on those extreme music scenes at large, as this quick mention taken out of the album's wiki page explains: 'In 2025, Rolli of Loudwire said *Jane Doe* was the band's best album' (to which you could at least add next LP *You Fail Me*, I would argue, but there's no time to discuss this matter now). Then Rolli wrote: "To the uninitiated, *Jane Doe* sounds like an impenetrable wall of bloodcurdling hardcore. To faithful Converge fans, it also sounds like an impenetrable wall of bloodcurdling hardcore — but in a complimentary way. [...] *Jane Doe* has worked its tendrils into various strains of metalcore and inspired legions of imitators, though none can hold a candle to its destructive onslaught." All of this is true, yet I guess that people like Rylee and I will probably have very different ways to phrase their admiration for this album. This record speaks to the psyche, you see, from its darkest recesses to the part in it where hope for better days can still be reached. How ironic -- but also pretty apt, come to think of it -- that the visuals and title of a work of art mercilessly exploring the topics of *alienation* and *self-alienation* through murderous riffage have become cultural signifiers uniting certain types of people all around the world -- a code word shared by like-minded souls eager to visit personal hell and return from it as a wiser person. Given the global score given to *Jane Doe* on this generator, not everyone is ready for such an experience. But rest assured that for those who are, this masterpiece shines with a very special (dark) light. Phoenix in flames. Then, phoenix in flight. May that cycle go on forever. 5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums. 10/10 for more general purposes (5 for the musicianship and production values + 5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 125 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 143 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 319

Much better than I was expecting. I am not a fan of metalcore at all so wasn't expecting the best. This seems good and enjoyable and seems like it was a very well respected album when it was released. This was fine.

Not into this type of music at all but this is a cool record. Can’t understand the screaming but it regardless has some cool song structure and parts.

1. concubine - 0 2. fall - 0 3. diztance - 4. pay - 5. home - 6. vouu - 7. bitter - 8. armz - 9. phoeniz - 10. flamez - 11. thauu - 12. jane - JUZT NOIZE , UUTF

I am not a metalhead, but this album is sticking with me.

Jane Doe goes hard, Hell To Pay and Thaw are quality, can't understand a word but if I had this on at the gym I would lift lifetime PBs every time. 3/5.

I am genuinely jealous of anyone that can listen to this and say "yup, that's beautiful". It literally made my ears hurt.

This album is a landmark in extreme music. It was a huge underground success. People still talk about this album, unlike Dillinger Escape Plan, the bigger similar band at the time. I hadn't played it for a while. It's not metalcore in the traditional sense. It was more varied than I remembered, a blend of grindcore and post-hardcore.

Never liked speed metal and not going to start now.

"Critics praised it's poetic lyrics"... My ass... You can't understand any of them. I'd love to try and appreciate the musical aspects of this, as I can be a metal/hardcore fan at times, but man I cannot stand the vocals.

That's what I'm talking about!

I finally got to see Converge live in a dive bar this past year. It was an amazing experience. This band, and this album, just... It's so beyond good. This album is THE metal core album. It's a masterpiece.

Aggressive, explosive, exhausting and exhilarating. A grinding noisy blur of thick heavy riffing, throat shredding screaming, and demented percussion. The best bits are the slowed down, ominous, doomy passages where they're gathering force and threatening the chaos to come - the chaos itself is harder to enjoy, at least on headphones, though you can image a crowd going absolutely bat shit for it. Great version of a genre I can appreciate without it really being my thing.

Progenitors of the metalcore genre (and the subsequent mathcore subgenre). Not my cup, but worth a listen.

Hate it. Can't stand the screaming.

Classic. I've always called this mathcore, since this has little in common with Merauder, Hatebreed or Killswitch Engage. Iconic in the artwork, mix and mastering and the music itself. Not for the average music fan, as the overall score proves. Don't let that come to your heart, dear submitter. Even myself, as a metalhead with a metalhead wife, waited 'till she had errands to run, since I knew there was a 65% chance she would consider this too much and ask me to play something else.

This is just being silly. I can listen to a lot of extreme and experimental music but this stuff is deliberately silly and not even original. It's been done a lot and there's even a Genre now!

Easily my favourite album back in high school. Now listening only for the sentiment value.

Just a classic tbh. Heard it a few times before but on this relisten I realize the dimensions there are to this album. Both highly influential and a great record in its own right. Very well could (and should) have been in the book proper, were it not for biases of the author.

Reminded me of At The Drive-In in places, no bad thing.

I'm not generally into metalcore but Converge is one of the rare exceptions. This album is iconic. The production is really a step above most of the genre.

1.5/5

Heavy! Possibly too heavy?

Not a big fan of metalcore to begin with. But most metalcore albums have some singing in it. This was just screaming into the microphone the whole time. I have friends who are big metal fans, and some are metalcore fans as well. But this was way too abrasive for me. NEXT.

I really enjoy this one. It takes just the right soup to make a good noise album for me, but this one has it. It just works, I don't know why, and I don't know why other things don't work. Fuck yeah 4/5

What it does, it does well. That does not mean I like it very much.

Jane Does.

cold case

Its better than that Beyonce album yesterday. Get's old pretty quick.

I couldn't get past the vocals.

Terrible

I didn’t like this. I found it inaccessible.

Unlistenable. I hate these vocals so much. It's painful to listen to. My personal rating: 1/5 My rating relative to the list: 1/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No

This singer is certainly upset about something. I have no idea what he's shouting about, but he's putting 110% into it, that's for sure! As metalcore bands go, this is one of the more accessible ones, but metalcore still has the ability of giving me a headache after 30 mins or so. There is indeed a lot of passion in this music. It's quite literally a sensory attack. And that's the point. It isn't supposed to be light and fluffy. It's supposed to be abrasive and hard. Overall, not something I'd spin too often, but I can appreciate why it's here. Favourite songs: Homewrecker, Fault and Fracture, The Broken Vow Least favourite songs: Hell to Pay 3/5

A buddy of mine recommended I listen to this after I complained that I couldn’t get into hardcore. The lyrics are unintelligible and he said that he wrote his senior thesis on harsh noise music and it’s actually pretty interesting how the ears adjust to it. People can identify different artists and songs where non-listeners just hear it all as static. That’s wild. I know that if I kept listening I would find more and more to appreciate, but as it is, where I am in my life, I have a hard time enjoying this genre. Sometimes I feel as though they alienate themselves on purpose so that the only fans they have are die hard beliebers. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t feel strongly for or against hardcore. Always love or hate. I want to love, but perchance I’m drinking too much haterade. Kill me. It won’t make a difference. 3/5

I’ve been enjoying the extent to which metal is covered on the user list. Unfortunately, this one is just a little too metal for me.

I like some metalcore bands, but it probably isn’t my favorite subgenre of metal. The music goes really hard and I love that however I hate hate hate the vocal style. Incomprehensible, yelled gibberish with no coherence.

I simply couldn't tolerate this enough to sit through it. I tapped. Sorry.

Converge, a noisy metalcore band before all else, saw the way capital H Hardcore was moving into the 21st century and sought to modernize it with a few notable changes. First, they leaned heavy on sludge metal influences in order to emphasize a distinctly gritty tone that bordered on the stuff crust punks were making at the time. This would become the signature sound of Kurt Ballou's engineering, which had been heard prior on Dropdead's second album and Orchid's first two albums, and would go on to characterize the sounds of bands like Nails and the Armed. Second, Converge would channel the passion of emerging screamo and sass vocal styles in order to convey a more emotional performance amongst gritty guitars, making for a hard-hitting heart-wrenching album of negative feelings following a breakup. Finally, Converge's songwriting reflects the technically-demanding mathcore style that had been established by bands like Rorschach and Botch prior to this release. Harnessing this approach, Converge made Jane Doe as chaotically crushing as possible while maintaining the concentrated speed for hardcore. The end result is a masterfully-crafted collection of songs that are more than the sum of its parts. Rarely does an album set such a high benchmark and stand so far apart from contemporaries with flying colors. By the closing swell of the title track, Jane Doe feels like it's ascended to all-new heights. Its legacy is proof of that. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: I don't think there should be any metalcore on the list, but if one album should represent the genre then it should be Jane Doe.

Oh some of these riffs are crushing, but a little more melody please!

Possibly the first hardcore/metalcore thing that I've heard on here that I felt like actually had the goods at all. Would have been dynamite if it were a little bit shorter, but I'm finally feeling my horizons expanding re: these genres. Hell of an album cover, too.

Good shit

Terrible 👎🏻

Like a jackhammer it said… correctly maybe? Not really my thing but I get the nomination.

I really didn’t enjoy this. 1.5

Really didn't like this, no surprise given its my least favorite style of metal. Vocally either screeching or mud, lyrics incomprehensible. Musically I recognize there is is skill and acumen required to produce this but to me it's all just high speed thrash. I think it's likely good for what it aspires to be but not-for-profit me.

This is the album that made me realize I didn't hate metalcore; I just hated MOST metalcore. I thought metalcore was only childish, simple and trying to appeal to a poppier side that wanted pretend heaviness. But this? This is incredible. Both sets of lyrics contrasting each other, the brutality, it's like ripping your own nerves out because you can't stand pain anymore and only exposing yourself to more pain. AND ITS JUST SO FUCKING HEAVY. With an album this heavy, pace is everything for me. It needs to ebb and flow just right so it doesn't get exhausting on the ears. And this does it JUST RIGHT. I never feel tired or overwhelmed here, just absolutely juiced.

Please stop yelling at me

This is so hard and so fast and so intense and so loud. My first attempt at listening, it was just too much. On a second attempt, in the right headspace, and with the volume at a safe level, I found it pretty enjoyable! But also... really needed to be in exactly the right mood and have the volume QUITE low.

I love, love, love extreme music, but even I think this is overrated.

Good stuff

Metalcore, hardcore punk, post-hardcore. Demasiados gritos repetitivos y sin sentido. Un 1.

There are points where it is just noise, but other times a song threatens to break through. Right at the extreme edge of what could get a mainstream release, and as such it is important that it exists. Not a comfortable listen, at points, but somehow I don’t think that will bother them!

Rating: 6/10

I can't say I normally enjoy metalcore, but Jane Doe by Converge is the exception to the rule. The wiki is rather funny with the "critics praising its poetic lyrics" part, certainly if I take a look at the lyrics online (no way anyone can understand these by listening). The music is shock and awe in a good way and it's a full force taking you over and leaving you behind in the dirt as a piece of garbage. It's overwhelming, without compromise, in your face. It clears you head and makes space for your next user album (being yet another fusion jazz funk no fun one of course).

The singer-songwriter contingent will rate this one down to hell, but for those who are open to it, this is a much more emotionally expressive album than most of the acoustic LPs added to the user list. It takes skill to make such intricate, layered instrumentals sound at once composed and chaotic – I started listening to this LP about a year ago, and it’s been a joy to return and pick apart all the bricks that make up a deftly-composed wall of sound. Sure, you have to look up the lyrics to see what they’re actually about, but I love how that makes the vocals blend so fluidly into the album’s abrasive texture. There’s an incredible amount of depth (instrumental and emotional) to this LP if you don’t write it off, and I for one much prefer a user list add that screams its emotion rather than gently whispering it over some acoustic guitar.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Honestly more boring than anything. Can only listen to Donald Duck screaming in absolute horror as he gets boiled alive in a gigantic oven for so long before I'm like "Okay yeah, I get it man, you got anything else". The style is almost comedic. It makes it so hard to focus and take some of the actually pretty sick riffs seriously.