Album Review: Converge - Love Is Not Enough
Reviewed by Oli Gonzalez
Sometimes, love is not enough. No matter how brave your smile or how optimistic your outlook on life is, the world can be a brutal hostile place and will tear you down! This bleak almost nihilistic perspective on life is the artistic fuel for this, Converge’s upcoming studio album, and serves as the driver for the majority of the song’s on “Love Is Not Enough”. As such, you can expect some unfiltered and on-the-nose lyrical themes, especially as topics of overcoming personal loss, grief, and seeing a loved one in peril and being unable to act on it are explored!
Such topics require a certain type of vocalist, and Jacob Bannon is the best man for the job. Having been a consistent force behind the mic for several decades in Converge, his unhinged and chaotic performance soaked in primitive rage is the perfect medium.
The band’s instrumentation and overall compositional approach is varied. ‘Distract and Divide’, and the other sub three minute balls-to-the-wall frenzies that come in the early parts of the album live will surely incite biblical levels of carnage such are the frantic and unrelenting pace of each! Though ‘Beyond Repair’ provides a moment of calm from the chaos in a slower instrumental number whilst serving as a moment of reflection and introspection. ‘Amon Amok’ enters a sludgy and groove heavy realm with the sheer atomic weight of the riff making it almost impossible not to want to headbang along! If you’re not much of a headbanger and fancy yourself as more of a singer, ‘We Were Never The Same’ will have you roaring along with an infectious chorus that’ll be imprinted in your subconscious before the song ends!
How to capture this chaos in the studio? Well, the approach to recording made for interesting reading. Jacob commented on how ‘realism is missing from a lot of modern music’ and described how the band went for a more perfectly-imperfect approach. Rather than combing over the recordings with painful and meticulous detail – an approach some bands take that ‘take the life out of what they’re doing’ – Converge opted for a more chaotic and raw approach. Upon closer inspection, it does feel more like a live recording than a polished studio album at times…and it works! It suits the band’s identity so much more. Maybe there are some sections that could be tightened up SLIGHTLY, but that isn’t who Converge are. They’ve actively avoided hiding behind the smokes and mirrors and comforting sanctuary that the studio can provide! The end product
“Love Is Not Enough” may be not be everybody, but lovers of hardcore will be presented with a testosterone filled sandwich that’s impossible to resist!
