By the time Converge recorded their 2017 album, The Dusk in Us, they were a long-established institution of metalcore known for pushing the limits of heavy music. One thing they weren't known for was filler. Thusly, when they left the studio with 18 finished songs, 13 ended up on The Dusk in Us and the other five would all see eventual widescale release as well, one as a B-side and the remaining four songs as this blazing EP, Beautiful Ruin. Every bit as strong as the material that made it onto the album, these tracks up the relentlessness and offer no downtime. Beautiful Ruin burns by in just under seven minutes, with opening song "Permanent Blue" being the only track to break the two-minute mark. That song and "Melancholia" both tend toward tense dynamics and guitarist Kurt Ballou's signature acrobatics of guitar dissonance. Converge have long sought to consistently extend their emotional and musical reaches, and Beautiful Ruin expands the pained, dizzying chapters that made up The Dusk in Us. The blistering title track flows without seams from the song preceding it, nailing shut the coffin with a storm of laser-focused blastbeats, glowering guitar breakdowns, and screaming group vocals repeating "Love means nothing!" in harrowing growls. Just as compositionally dense and fiendishly intense as what the almost 30 years of development leading up to it would lead fans to expect, Beautiful Ruin is all the more exciting for its brevity. Gasping for air for the entire duration, this EP serves much more as a window into the urgency and sharpness of the band than as a handful of leftover outtakes. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi

1		Permanent Blue
2		Churches and Jails
3		Melancholia
4		Beautiful Ruin

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