Blood Moon Live At Roadburn 2016
THE VAN is rolling through Converge’s home state of Massachusetts, the place where it all began when Jacob and guitarist Kurt Ballou formed the band in 1990. On the opposite side of the state, in the town of Beverly, lies Jacob’s sanctum; his Deathwish Inc. office where he works as the co-founder of one of heavy music’s most respected independent labels.
Jacob is an enigma; creatively hyper-expressive and regarded as an icon, yet to figure him out completely is a challenge. Asked about his artistic endeavours, he’ll talk passionately and at length about his various artistic ideas and processes. He’s effortlessly profound and utterly captivating all the while, too – even if it is almost impossible to keep up with all the brilliant tangents on which he takes you as his mind races ahead of his mouth. Yet that brief reference to his wife is one of very few he makes to his personal life in well over an hour of conversation. Through that tiny window lies a glimpse at what propels the man, aside from a restless urge to create.
As well as trying to sate an ever-burning desire to make art, Jacob now must strive to be “a present partner, father, and part of the family unit”. It’s a tough balancing act, but Jacob is adamant that he has it under control.
“Having a family is an all-encompassing priority,” he admits. “But I still have a restlessness within me. It just means that when I’m in a creative mode, I’m hyper-focused.
“If I was overly cautious about what I release into the world, that’d be one thing, but I’m addicted to forward movement. Finish one thing, move onto the next. That helps with scheduling and making sure I’m finishing things while being the best, most present father I can be.”
That need for momentum is the very thing that allows him to excel as a visual artist, writer, musician, and father at the same time. It’s something Jacob claims was instilled in him during adolescence.
In the Rungs In A Ladder documentary (below), he suggests that he may not have been pushed towards art and creativity if he’d experienced “a well-adjusted, suburban upbringing… with a basic nuclear family.” And while he isn’t keen to expand on that, he does acknowledge that his ‘addiction’ isn’t without reason.
“Every creative person is trying to put together some sort of puzzle piece that will fit whatever is missing inside them,” Jacob reasons, noticeably refusing to refer directly to himself. “That’s what all this is. And being aware of that doesn’t mean you can necessarily repair those things. It’s an interesting place to be.
“I wrote a line on [the inner sleeve inlay of 2009 album] Axe To Fall: ‘We may get better, but we may not get well.’ You may develop a sense of self-awareness and be able to work on things, but we’re still always working to try and formulate those pieces that are missing and find other things that can fit in their place.”
Jacob is unwilling to reveal the findings of his soul-searching, but his outlook is a positive one.
“All it did was give me the tools to be a creative person. I see it as just being the thing that gave me the keys to a platform to express myself about other things as well. A lot of it is masked or artistically protected in metaphor…”
He pauses. “But that’s what art is, right?”