Somewhere in Salem, Massachusetts, four men climbed into a room and emerged thirty-one minutes later, having apparently swallowed a thunderstorm whole and asked it politely to leave. This is the best explanation I can currently come up with for Love Is Not Enough, Converge’s eleventh album, and frankly, it’s the only one that feels proportionate to the experience.
Time does strange things around this heavy band. They’ve been doing this for thirty-something years, which on paper should mean diminishing returns, calcification, the slow cooling of the magma into something decorative and safe. Instead, the album arrives as a sink dropped from a great height onto a parking lot. It doesn’t ask if you’re ready. It just goes, and suddenly I’m back to 16, free of purpose.
The title track opens the album and proceeds with Jacob Bannon’s voice is a man screaming and arguing with the weather — and winning. Kurt Ballou’s guitar work pounds with geometry collapsing under its own weight. Ben Koller plays drums with each blow an ending and a proof of something. Nate Newton’s bass is the gravitational field that keeps the whole impossible structure from drifting into orbit. The album moves through you like a blade cutting through dark standing water. “Distract and Divide” is nine seconds of grindcore brutality that leaves you blinking at the ceiling wondering what limb you just lost. “Force Meets Presence” is thrash and sludge locked in a death embrace, each trying to strangle the other, both succeeding.
Converge is a band built on experience, and Love Is Not Enough is proof that even in 2026, they’re still far from over. They’re best since Axe To Fall.
