Five years after Bloodmoon: I, Converge return with Love Is Not Enough, a short, violent record with no fat on it. No long introductions, no indulgent experiments. This is Converge in blade mode. It goes in, cuts, and gets out.
Anyone who follows this quartet from Salem knows what they are here for. Ferocity is nothing new, but what still hits is how, after more than 30 years, the band can sound urgent without sounding nostalgic. There is no attempt here to reinvent the wheel or to win over new audiences. There is conviction. And anger, aimed with purpose.
The opener, ‘Love Is Not Enough’, works as a warning. Short, thrashy, direct, built to set bodies spinning and foreheads bleeding. It was a single, yes, but there is nothing accessible about it. It is just enough to remind you that love, on its own, is not enough to survive anything. Then comes ‘Bad Faith’, kicking in with a filthy groove that nods at ‘Wolverine Blues’ by Entombed, not an innocent reference. It is the kind of track that both snaps your neck and calls the mosh, with that death and roll weight Converge can use without losing their identity.
‘Distract and Divide’ and ‘To Feel Something’ are pure assaults. Short, grindcore, pedal down the whole way. Blast beats, sawing riffs, and zero space to breathe. There is no pretty catharsis here, just physical wear. And that is a good thing. Halfway through, ‘Beyond Repair’ lands as an ambient interlude, almost ironic, pretending the record is about to give you a break. Spoiler, it will not. It only marks the point of no return. ‘Amon Amok’ sounds like All We Love We Leave Behind in raw form. Kurt Ballou’s riffs stick to your nervous system, reminding you why he is still a force of his own inside hardcore and extreme metal. Jacob Bannon does not ease up for a second. A pterodactyl is permanently on the attack, never out of breath, never short on reasons.
‘Force Meets Presence’ leans back into thrash, with a dry, precise aggression. Ballou fires off Slayer-level riffs without sounding like a tribute act. There is no nostalgia here; there is method. ‘Gilded Cage’ opens with Ballou and Nate Newton steering everything through a rising riff and a hypnotic bass line. It is the most introspective moment on the record, but it never goes soft. Even when it looks inward, it keeps moving forward. This album does not stall.
‘Make Me Forget You’ is the longest track, and perhaps the cruellest. Ben Koller’s opening d beat, crusty riffs in the Wolfbrigade vein, and a progression that erodes you little by little. When Bannon spits, “I never said what I’ve meant to, nothing can make me forget you,” you feel an old wound that never fully closed. In the final moments, the song dissolves into something more airy, setting the stage for ‘We Were Never the Same’. There is Ballou’s tapping, Nate holding the chaos in place, Ben on ritual-like rhythms. Jacob Bannon screams like someone who lost his faith a long time ago, even if there is still a faint trace of light at the bottom. The message is simple and bitter: time passes, people change, and often they get worse. Disappointment is inevitable. Moving on is not heroic; it is survival.
Love Is Not Enough does not want to be comforting, or historic, nor “important.” It wants to be true. Converge are not here to save anyone, or to prove they still matter. They simply exist the way they always have, intense, honest, and relentless. This record is for anyone who still believes hardcore and metal can be ugly, physical, and emotional without turning into a caricature. It is for anyone who would rather have scars than empty anthems.
Converge keep bleeding.
And as long as that is happening, they still matter.