Boston hardcore destroyers Converge have been one of the greatest heavy-music bands on the planet for many, many years. In their all-out ferocity, they have, again and again, found new ways to make hardcore sound rich and technical and ambitious, and to fuse it with metal. Every new Converge record is an event. And today, just six months after releasing their titanic album The Dusk In Us, they have unleashed a new four-song EP called Beautiful Ruin into the world.

Around the time Converge released The Dusk In Us, guitarist and producer Kurt Ballou mentioned that the band had four songs left over from the album’s sessions and that those songs would be coming out at some point, either as B-sides or as an EP. Presumably, those four songs are the ones on Beautiful Ruin.

After one listen, though, it’s pretty clear that these are not album leftovers. All four songs are all-out rippers — short and nasty and brutal roiling tantrums that resurrect the Converge of old. With Ballou’s production, the songs sound grand and titanic in ways that don’t compromise their aggression. The whole thing is fast enough to leave your head spinning; the four songs are over in less than seven minutes. This shit feels good, and to stream it below.

UPDATE: Converge have also shared an intense, violent, hallucinatory music video that director Tony Wolski has made for their new song “Melancholia.” Here’s that:

The Beautiful Ruin EP is out now on Epitaph.