Converge have shared details of a new album called ‘Love Is Not Enough’, and shared the blistering new title track.
After dropping various teasers online earlier this week, the band are back with details of their 11th studio album.
Set for release on February 13, the record comes 35 years into their time as a band, and is set to mark the climax of their decades-long journey through the world of punk, hardcore and metal.
Today (Tuesday November 18), they have shared the first taster of the record with the brutal title track, which captures the immense emotion and power that the members continue throughout the LP.
Speaking about the inspiration behind the track, singer Jacob Bannon said that the song “explores what it means to remain empathetic and compassionate in the modern world”. He also added that it is “a reckoning with who we are today and hope to be in the future – if we can fend off the scavengers.”
As for the album as a whole, the tracklist aims to be all of their experience coming together more clearly than ever before. A press release shares that it will not feature any special guests nor any “studio trickery”, but rather capture the raw, unadulterated force that the band capture together when in the studio.
“I think that realism is missing from a lot of modern music of any genre, but especially our genre,” the frontman shared. “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.”
Continuing to explain how ‘Love Is Not Enough’ is all about momentum, rather than manicured perfection, Bannon shared: “It does a thing that no other Converge record does – it keeps ramping up, 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.”
The record was mixed by guitarist Kurt Ballou at God City in Salem, Massachusetts, and engineering assistance came from Zach Weeks. You can pre-order the record here.
Next month, Converge will perform at the Saddest Day Festival in Boston, Massachusetts, before heading over to the pond for festival appearances at Jera On Air in the Netherlands and Outbreak Fest in the UK on June 25 and 27, respectively.
Last year, it was shared that the American hardcore veterans had dropped a new live album to raise funds for Hurricane Helene relief efforts. The album was recorded at The Abbey in Orlando, Florida in March 2022 and consisted of 18 tracks, including ‘Under Duress’, ‘I Can Tell You About Pain’ and ‘Concubine’.
