Nine years have passed since the release of Converge’s last album, ‘The Dusk In Us’. While the more recent ‘Bloodmoon: I’ – the band’s admirably ambitious collaboration with Chelsea Wolfe – prevented the passing of a near-decade of Converge-less time, the wait for a new Converge album proper has never been greater. And the resultant ‘Love Is Not Enough’ is very much a Converge album proper. The gothic charm of ‘Bloodmoon: I’ is gone, to be replaced instead by the same raw atavism that made albums like ‘Jane Doe’ and ‘Axe To Fall’ the milestones they’ve become. In this regard, little has changed for Converge.
In others, however, everything has changed. Now in his fifties, guitarist Kurt Ballou has become one of modern metal’s most reputable producers. Vocalist Jacob Bannon holds the equally impressive achievement of co-founding the now well-established Deathwish Inc. record label; not to mention his various successes in visual media. This is all in addition to Converge’s accomplishments during the formative years of this century, when the band occupied a pivotal position at the vanguard of extreme music. It all adds to a return that many will greet with somewhat of a hero’s welcome. By now, Converge has nothing more to prove.
That said, ‘Love Is Not Enough’ is remarkably youthful. It is infused with a scorching ferocity that belies the band’s age and status. Bannon’s voice is at times scarcely believable for a vocalist this far into his career; the apotheosis of oral aggression. His upper register, which he deployed to a somewhat strained extent throughout ‘Bloodmoon: I’, is better refined here, with moments like ‘To Feel Something’ offering emotional light between the shade cast by his ferocious roars. Ballou’s riffs are equally affecting, sounding as blistering on the title track as they do chunky on ‘Force Meets Presence’.
‘Love Is Not Enough’ is a trim half-an-hour, with no song within the album’s opening half exceeding three minutes. It’s Converge’s shortest album to date, but it’s also one of their punchiest. The five songs that constitute the album’s first half are expectedly imperious, but the songwriting remains consistently slick too. The aforementioned ‘To Feel Something’ is a highlight thanks to the song’s loose tempo changes, themselves backed by an approach to percussion that has us questioning just how many drums Converge has at their disposal. Meanwhile, ‘Distract and Divide’ has a scuzzier feel, with instruments that sound like they’ve been dragged through dust-ridden wasteland, only to be plugged into amplifiers with frayed cabling and sparks flying.
According to Bannon, the new album does something that no other Converge record has previously. “It keeps ramping up,” he says, “and that’s definitely by design.” The quantifiable effect this has on the album is twofold. Firstly, the songs become longer as the album progresses. Secondly, the album’s latter moments are its most expansive. It’s to Converge’s credit that the record finds cohesion in its variety. It’s a short album, but one that’s underpinned by a diversity of sounds that coalesce into a bundle of listless intensity. A band who consummately executes melodies and rhythm are often applauded. In Converge’s case, the same acclaim should be afforded to their use of texture.
Beginning with the somewhat unadventurous ‘Amon Amok’, this portion still sees Converge at their domineering best. And that includes a penchant for the unpredictable, as is demonstrated to great effect when Ballou injects an almost cinematic pomp into the dizzying final stages of ‘Force Meets Presence’, or with the dour introspection that sees ‘Gilded Cage’ transform the band into lovers of ‘90’s shoegaze. It’s commendably executed too; with the song seamlessly finding a place within the album’s wider scenery.
Then there’s ‘We Were Never The Same’; a meditation on loss that finds comfort in collective anguish. The song’s setting – a funeral – is the theoretical epitome of grief, yet the common-ground found between attendees engenders a chain-reaction of healing. In a moment of philosophical sincerity, Bannon questions why “we all gather to mourn yet not to cherish” – to consequently end proceedings with a strangely sweet demeanour.
Yet it should be to nobody’s amazement that these closing moments see Bannon as a sentimentalist. After all, Converge are not a new band and time makes romanticists of us all. “Being past your average middle age, we’re starting to see deeper than before into a variety of places,” as Bannon himself says. To be so consistently indebted, however, to a lifetime of music within a genre that falls all too frequently between the cultural cracks, requires not just dedication, but emotional investment. “We still identify this band as the outlet that’s essential to our lives,” Bannon says. It is thus apropos that, for those who feel similarly, ‘Love Is Not Enough’ will represent both an outpouring of commitment and a jubilant return.
BEN WILLIAMS
Photos by: Pahan Senevirathne Words by: Lucinda Scott Special thanks to Destroy All Lines If you squeezed into the sold out 170 Russell on Thursday expecting a safe pop show, you were in the wrong place. LA based duo VOILÀ might have blown up online but the Magic Word tour proves that the live stage is […]