Converge: Love Is Not Enough

Any band 35 years in operation is one that almost defies belief. But for a hardcore band to still be delivering the kind of energy that Converge do so long into their tenure, it crystallises their legend.

On the band’s eleventh studio album, Love Is Not Enough, Jacob Bannon (vocals / lyrics), Kurt Ballou (guitarist / producer), Nate Newton (bass / vocals) and Ben Koller (drums) frame turbulence like few others in the metal and hardcore broadchurch. While hardcore has always possessed a youthful vim, both through theme and sound, Converge blur the lines of age. Led by Bannon’s poetic snapshots, the Boston band remain a potent force, and on Love Is Not Enough, they unveil a requiem for these times.

Once again recorded and mixed by Ballou with assistance from Zach Weeks at God City studios in Salem, Massachusetts, Love Is Not Enough underlines the ills of a modern world. The conflict, the economic struggle, the frustration, all compounding above the morbid realities of growing older and seeing loved ones leave us. It’s this rawness that Converge feed off sonically, with a back-to-basics approach capturing a live energy that lifts these songs into a new stratosphere. The world is unravelling, and while most are running in the opposite direction, Converge ceaseless march into the eye of the storm.

In the lead-up to the release of Love Is Not Enough, per the press release, Bannon talked about Converge being “the outlet that’s essential to our lives… Being past your average middle age, we’re starting to see deeper than before into a variety of places.” This feeling extends to those who have grown alongside the band for all these years, making the connection between Converge and their audience greater than ever before.

Beginning with the freight-train speed of the eponymous track. Barrelling into the maelstrom, Converge wrestle against the unforgiving nature of the world. Lennon and McCartney once professed love was all you need but Converge shatter the notion with a song that sounds more like a hijacking of a High on Fire recording session. Koller’s double kick drums, eclipsing the chaos that Des Kensel once rained on listeners, and as Bannon laments, “Truth is never wrong, time is never right / We can’t see the past when the present blinds,” it’s one of the most strident moments the band has committed to tape in years.

So good, it’s hard to know where Converge go to next, but Bad Faith is a worthy landing spot. A song about watching someone slowly being torn apart by life’s harsh aims, this fizzy breezeblock sees Bannon flitting between menace and melody. It’s the album’s darkest moment alongside Gilded Cage, as Converge scrape along the fault lines (“Systematically, we seethe / Pharmaceutically, we bleed / Dependently, we take a knee / My acceptance is not defeat”).

Their perilous crusade continues on Distract and Divide. A fierce indictment of these times, this ghoulish sonic boom ferociously rip and tears. A contrast with To Feel Something, as Converge contemplate growing older, experiencing a disconnect as the gap between old and new world widens. It feeds into Beyond Repair. A stormy instrumental that rolls into the metallic cloud of doom that is Amon Amok, and like the hard-edged Force Meets Presence, both tracks see Converge smashing crust-punk into metal, as Converge howl into the crescendo on the back of Ballou’s ray-gun riff-a-rolla.

The heavy blows keep coming, firstly with penultimate track, Make Me Forget You. As Bannon and Newton trade blows, the blood bleeds into the patchwork of the latter’s antics in Old Man Gloom. A change of pace that has been prominent throughout Converge’s later years as they find new ways to peddle their pain.

And there’s more of it on We Were Never the Same. Bannon places us at the scene of a funeral, where brief commonality is felt, only for everyone to swiftly retreat back into everyday life as it resumes its vise-like grip. With a line like, “Why do we all gather to mourn yet not to cherish?’, it highlights the disposability and break-neck speed of society. The ability to process, overshadowed by immediacy, leaving most to exist and function on a surface level.

In a world where everything is so readily accessible with little time to absorb the essence of anything, how do we change it? Can we change it? Or are these fleeting real-time interactions something we must adapt to? These are the aspects through the dark prism of worldly cynicism that Converge explore on Love Is Not Enough. A sweeping, malevolent declaration where they haven’t sounded as vibrant in years.

Love Is Not Enough is out now via Epitaph. Purchase from Bandcamp.