Petitioning the Empty Sky

The album's opening track “The Saddest Day” was written in guitarist Kurt Ballou’s dorm room apartment at Boston University, which vocalist Jacob Bannon described as "this weird bathroom/bedroom thing". Here, Ballou showcased for Bannon some of the song's basic riff ideas he had composed. Bannon said,

I think we were starting to get comfortable in just being what we were. As far as it becoming an album, we were just thinking in seven-inches. We were just writing some songs and saying, 'hey, let’s record ’em.” We didn’t think in terms of albums, much less crafting one. It was just not really in our wheelhouse yet."

When the band signed with Equal Vision, the label suggested compiling all of the band's previous EPs into a "collection record of sorts".^[4]

He also said:

I think that record certainly is a little more straight-ahead than Halo in Haystack and Unloved and Weeded Out, and things like that. I think a lot of that doesn’t’ necessarily have to do with our writing style. I just think our emotions were a little more streamlined this time. I really feel that a lot of things that we really wanted to cover — it wasn’t more or less a collaboration of sorts, how the other records functioned. But it was more or less Kurt having to get all these crazy things out of him, and, in the same right, lyrically myself, and that record came out between the both of us. And I think that’s probably why it’s more focused. Because, as far as the other people in the band writing stuff for that record, I think more of the input was done between myself and him, when he lived in the city. We used to get together every couple days and work on songs together. He would show me what exactly he had and what he wanted to do, and I would kind of pick and choose and tell him what I wanted to do.^[5]

Jacob Bannon recalled the late-night vocal tracking sessions for the album as the first time he had truly felt satisfied with what he had captured on audio recording. He said,

It was hectic and unhinged, and those wild sounds and voices I wanted to create I’d actually been able to. It takes a while to get there, you know? I just remember being really content riding my bike home from that session thinking we’d created something that was special, at least to me. I didn’t really think in terms of how it would impact other people or if people would enjoy it or relate to what we were trying to make. And I still don’t, in a lot of ways.^[6]

The music on Petitioning the Empty Sky is considered to be "darker", "more aggressive" and more "straight-on" than some of the band's previous albums. ^[7]

Tracks nine through eleven - "For You", "Antithesis" and "Homesong" - were recorded live during a performance on radio station WJUL, run by college students at UMass Lowell. A notable moment on the live track "Homesong" is when a band member breaks a guitar string and pauses the song, and bleeding singer Jacob Bannon claims to have "hit my head on a mic stand" and that it will "make us look punk." The original CD release on Ferret Music features "Homesong" as a hidden/untitled song following "Antithesis".

Petitioning the Empty Sky was originally released through Ferret Music in 1996 and was also one of the earliest albums released through the newly formed label.^[8] This early version was a 7-inch EP featuring only the first four tracks of the eventual full-length.^[9] Later that same year, the record was re-released with four new tracks added to it.

Studio recordings of the live tracks "For You" and "Homesong" were originally released on the Unloved and Weeded Out 7-inch EP in 1995. The full length compilation version of Unloved and Weeded Out was later released in 2002 through Deathwish and also featured these two songs. The studio recording of "Antithesis" could originally be found on Converge's debut album Halo in a Haystack in 1994, and later on the compilation album Caring and Killing released in 1997. The song "Dead" was rerecorded from the version on Caring and Killing, which was recorded in 1994/1995. The original version of "Love As Arson" was released on When Forever Comes Crashing in 1998.

In 1998, the album was reissued through Converge's new label Equal Vision Records as EVR040 on January 20, 1998.^[10] The full length reissue contained three live tracks ("For You," "Homesong," and "Antithesis") recorded during a radio broadcast, three newly recorded tracks ("Buried But Breathing," "Farewell Note to This City," and "Color Me Blood Red") and one track ("Shingles") that was recorded along with the original four tracks, but were unreleased.

Shortly after the release of Converge's 2004 album You Fail Me through Epitaph Records, Equal Vision reissued remasters of Petitioning the Empty Sky and When Forever Comes Crashing. The updated version of Petitioning the Empty Sky featured new artwork from Isis frontman Aaron Turner, production work from Converge's Kurt Ballou in addition to Mike Poorman and Alan Douches, and an alternate version of "Love As Arson" as a bonus track. The liner notes also contain the first half of an essay written by the "Aggressive Tendencies" columnist and editor of the Canadian online magazine Exclaim!, Chris Gramlich.^[8][9][11] The second part of the essay is continued in When Forever Comes Crashing. The remaster was Equal Vision's EVR109 released on March 22, 2005.^[12]

In 2006, Jacob Bannon's Deathwish Inc. released a vinyl box set collection for the remasters of Petitioning the Empty Sky and When Forever Comes Crashing in a package dubbed Petitioning Forever.^[13] Due to the physical limitations of a vinyl LP, a single 12-inch record cannot hold all of the songs from the remaster. The three live tracks were released separately with the first pressing on a 7-inch vinyl with its own artwork based on box set packaging.^[14] The box set was Deathwish's DWI47,^[15] and the separate vinyl was cataloged as DWLIMITED04.^[14]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[2]
AntiMusic.com	[16]
LambGoat	(9/10)[17]
Prefix	(9/10)[9]

Allmusic critic Blake Butler wrote: "Converge can break multiple bones throughout the body with sound alone, assaulting with beautiful metal riffs, throat-ripping screams, and aggressive smashing percussion."^[2]

The album's opening track "The Saddest Day" is considered one of the band's most popular and revered songs.^[18][19] Frank Turner of Loudersound said,

"You can hear an entire genre being torn apart in the first 30 seconds [...] in a way, hardcore as a genre can be defined as before and after this song."^[20]

Graham Hartmann of Revolver wrote:

Converge truly became Converge on Petitioning the Empty Sky. From the first dissonant notes of “The Saddest Day,” it was undeniable that a new extreme formula had been discovered, blending hardcore and extreme metal together with an ingenious, progressive, chaotic twist. “The Saddest Day” is what a hungry band sounds like — saying “fuck it” to the status quo of their scene and freely experimenting with every dynamic they could conjure up. The rest of the hardcore-centric Petitioning the Empty Sky is the very best of Nineties-era Converge, but no other track competes with the elevated status of “The Saddest Day.” Frankly, few Converge cuts ever have.^[21]

• Petitioning the Empty Sky stream at MySpace
• Petitioning the Empty Sky catalog at Discogs
• Petitioning the Empty Sky catalog at Rate Your Music