CONVERGE – Love Is Not Enough

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8.0

• Bands:
  CONVERGE
• Duration: 00:31:00
• Available from: 02/13/2026
• Label:

• Epitaph

Streaming not yet available

With “Love Is Not Enough” Converge reaffirm a principle that, in their case, has never really been in question, but which is reiterated here with particular clarity: expressive urgency doesn't need great frills.
The new album by the historic metalcore group from Salem, Massachusetts, arrives as a dry and frontal statement, almost programmatic, and seems to arise from the need to realign their language after a deliberately extensive and ambitious deviation like “Bloodmoon”. That work, created together with Chelsea Wolfe and other guests, explored more expanded, atmospheric and reflective territories, focusing on long pieces and an emotional tension that was built through accumulation.
“Love Is Not Enough” instead takes the opposite direction: compact, nervous, essential, it is a record that gives no respite and that brings Converge back to a form of controlled, immediate, often profoundly physical brutality.

First of all, the duration is striking: at about half an hour, we are probably faced with the most concentrated album of their career, a detail that is anything but secondary. Here each piece seems to have a precise function, no superfluous digressions, a few passages left there to please the listener more inclined to analysis. Looking at their recent career, in terms of 'regular' records, after a work that is in its own way stratified and oblique like “The Dusk In Us”, often imbued with noise rock suggestions of AmRep origin and skewed structures, Converge here consciously choose to simplify the trajectory, without however impoverishing the result. Indeed, the feeling is that of a band that, thanks to immense experience, knows exactly where to strike.

Always observing the works of recent times, the most natural reference appears in some ways to be “All We Love We Leave Behind”, due to that relative accessibility that does not smooth out the edges but makes the language more readable; however, “Love Is Not Enough” feels even more effortless in showcasing its roots.
In this case Converge don't hide, they don't try to mask historical influences, and indeed they put them back at the center of a classic, concrete, at times almost primordial sound. For example, “Bad Faith”, with its massive and rocky pace, openly recalls “Wolverine Blues” by Entombed, but does so without lapsing into mannerism: it is a lived quote, internalized, returned with personality.

Even more so after the elaborate density of “Bloodmoon”, this linearity almost sounds like a breath of fresh air. Nothing here is truly revolutionary, but the songwriting exercise in aggressive registers bears excellent fruit.
The riffs abound and remain imprinted: the aforementioned “Bad Faith”, “Amon Amok” and “Force Meets Presence” are songs destined to be remembered, especially when they are tried live, where Converge's language has always found its most aggressive and sincere form.
Having said that, the work is not just carnage: in the end the tracklist slows down a little, becomes more shadowy and articulated, showing once again the experience of a band now capable of moving naturally on every front, with for example more jagged tracks such as “Gilded Cage” or “We Were Never the Same”, which take up more deviant guitar solutions, at least at times.

Perhaps, after thirty-five years of activity, it is natural to treat yourself to a truthful record like this. In recent times, the pauses between one release and another have become longer, and each new chapter by the Americans arrives with the calm of someone who knows exactly what he wants to say.
“Love Is Not Enough” pushes hard, aims for the essential, but does so with taste, even when playing with quotes. Indeed, one could say that the work acquires further value precisely in light of the position that Converge occupy today: from the height of an untouchable reputation and an almost fanatical following, the group could easily have afforded yet another experimental turn, perhaps filled with abstract concepts, daring solutions and a certain intellectual complacency; a well-packaged supercazzola, signed Converge, which would not have failed to find hordes of listeners ready to praise its depth.
In this sense, choosing linearity is not exactly the easiest path, but rather a stance: focusing on riffs, on synthesis, on a polemical and direct language means exposing oneself, taking off protections, giving up the charm of opacity to seek a more frank comparison. And it is precisely here that the album wins its most delicate challenge, because giving an interesting development to an apparently simple subject, avoiding self-plagiarism and routine, was not at all a given.

“Love Is Not Enough” instead manages to keep the tension high from start to finish, playing on nuances, rhythmic joints and variations in intensity that only emerge upon careful listening, without ever flaunting complexity.
It is an album that speaks clearly, but is never superficial; a work that seems to say everything right away, but which continues to stick with us.
Ultimately, this is also what makes Converge's return so successful: the ability to transform an apparently prudent choice into a strong, almost political gesture, reiterating that, sometimes, the most incisive way to say something is to do it without beating around the bush.