A new Converge album is always something of an event and their latest opus Love Is Not Enough is no exception. The long awaited follow up to the band’s last full length album, 2017’s The Dusk In Us, is a brilliant return from the band and sees Converge destroying all in their path with a fearsome collection of songs.
While the band’s sublime 2021 Blood Moon collaboration with Chelsea Wolfe saw the band embark on a different set of musical ideas and fully deserved the plaudits that the album received, Love Is Not Enough sees Converge in vintage form, with their cathartic metallic hardcore at full power from start to finish and they will deservedly reap all the praise they will get from this album as well.
Love Is Not Enough springs into life with its namesake opening track, an immediate jolt of energy that harks back at the bands hardcore roots and still sounds completely fresh at the same time, and is abundantly clear as Converge have been at the forefront of forward thinking, cathartic heavy music, then Love Is Not Enough does nothing but continues that reign in formidable style.
Vocalist Jacob Bannon, guitarist Kurt Ballou, bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller are all on blistering form as they blast through each of the tracks from Love Is Not Enough with the intense, riff heavy ‘Force Meets Presence’ and the frenetic ‘Distract And Divide’ being particular highlights in an album that is packed all of them and completely uncompromising from start to finish.
Love is Not Enough is also an extremely varied record that takes in many different twists and turns without ever sounding cliched. The brooding menace of ‘Beyond Repair’ is an instrumental interlude that exemplifies this and when it segues into the formidable ‘Amon Amok’ it makes it all the more powerful.
The discordant noise rock of ‘Gilded Cage’ also works so well in amongst the ferocious metallic hardcore that Converge do so well and as the record concludes with ‘We Were Never The Same’ which features a poundingly hypnotic opening drum rhythm that evokes memories of the start of ‘Hung, Drawn & Quartered’ by High On Fire (who Ben Koller has been playing with live funnily enough) before erupting into a song that ends this epic record perfectly.
Rightfully angry as fuck, ice cold in its execution, Love Is Not Enough is Converge at doing what they do best, and three decades into their existence as band and they sound even more powerful and vital than ever.
