Converge "Love Is Not Enough" [Golden God Vinyl]

For more than three decades, Converge have delivered musical and emotional catharsis, putting purpose before perception and intent before interpretation. Whether it’s their 2001 landmark recording Jane Doe or their 2021 Bloodmoon: I collaboration with Chelsea Wolfe, they have created some of the most compelling music, lyrics, and visual art of the 21st century. During that time, fewer bands have had a greater impact on the underground imagination.
It seems unlikely that anyone who has been making music for this long would create one of their best works for their eleventh album, in their 35th year as a band. And yet: Love is Not Enough might be the apotheosis of Converge’s decades-long journey through the punk, hardcore and metal microcosm. What vocalist/lyricist Jacob Bannon, guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou, bassist/vocalist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller have created is a strident artistic statement on the turmoil of living that hones their collective strengths to a razor’s edge.
There isn’t an ounce of fat. Every song moves with a power and purpose that eclipses their human origins, that speaks to the anger, pain, and frustration of the modern age. From the opening fusillade of the title track to the closing hurricane of “We Were Never the Same,” Love Is Not Enough is a sonorous balance of vitality and viciousness that reflects the chaos and uncertainty of the times we live in.

“There’s always obstacles in the world,” Bannon says. “Personal, professional, economical, whatever. But I feel like we’re in a pressure cooker somewhere on our evolutionary line. It’s a lot just to be a human being in the modern world, trying to function, maintain, grow, have empathy, have compassion. It takes more than it used to, to do all those things.”

The album title itself says everything about the trials of today. “The line ‘Love is not enough’ is something I had kicking around for a while,” Bannon says. “Some of the things I wrote at the time were from a human resilience perspective, an acceptance of the brutality and unforgiving nature of the world. I was reflecting on that in poetic form and set it aside. When we got into the studio, it all fit together.”

“Bad Faith” is a deeply personal song about cruel intentions and limited options. “It came from watching someone I love being wronged and broken apart, and there was nothing I could do about it because there was no good intention in the first place,” Bannon says. “It’s that feeling of helplessness because nothing I could do or say could better the situation. I just had to love and support and do what I could to be there. But I couldn’t effect actual change. That’s a horrible feeling.”

“We Were Never The Same” recognizes the unrelatable in even the closest of relations. “That one was written about getting together with people at a funeral, finding commonality among a variety of people in your life at a time of loss and grief,” Bannon says. “We’ve all been through some version of that in our lives. If you listen to heavy music, you appreciate the time, you appreciate the faces, you appreciate the histories with different people and loved ones. But then the next day comes, all the regular stressors of everyday life kick in, and you don’t really connect the way you wish to after reflecting on the loss of somebody. I was processing all that stuff when I wrote the line, ‘Why do we all gather to mourn yet not to cherish?’ It’s an honest question.”

Love Is Not Enough features no special guests, no studio trickery, no relentless massaging of human imperfection in trying to manufacture the perfect take. “I think that realism is missing from a lot of modern music of any genre, but especially our genre,” Bannon says. “Things either go super raw and almost chaotic to the point where it's distracting, or bands take the life out of what they’re doing by editing every aspect. Sometimes the perfect take is the one that has some wildness to it. It's not perfectly executed. There’s a lot of powerful moments on this record and a lot of angry moments. The realism amplifies that.”

Unlike so many albums that adhere to a time-honored sequencing format, cherry-picking favored tracks for the all-important first, second, and final spots, Love Is Not Enough is all about momentum. “It does a thing that no other Converge record does—it keeps ramping up,” Bannon says. “And that’s definitely by design. Internally, we passed around dozens of ideas for sequencing because everyone interprets music differently and there’s no right way of doing it. When we do that, we always joke that we all have to be equally unhappy. But this is the one that works.”

Love Is Not Enough was recorded and mixed by Kurt Ballou at God City in Salem, Massachusetts, with engineering assistance from Zach Weeks. Jacob Bannon did the artwork and design, creating an image for each song and a commanding cover depicting a celestial witness to a world aflame.

“We still identify this band as the outlet that’s essential to our lives,” Bannon says. “We give everything we have to it. Being past your average middle age, we’re starting to see deeper than before into a variety of places. And I don’t think that’s specific to us. I think that’s something that’s utterly relatable.”