Thirty-six years in and the best hardcore aggregate of the year: 87/100 across 13 reviews for Love Is Not Enough, Converge’s first proper album since The Dusk in Us. Three perfect scores on the board, Kerrang!, Louder Than War and New Noise all reach for the word « masterpiece », plus a volley of 9/10s from Metal Hammer, Blabbermouth, Distorted Sound and Sputnikmusic. The public follows: 78/100 across nearly 4,700 votes.
What unites everyone: the intensity hasn’t moved an inch. Blabbermouth sums up a band « still obliterating all-comers » this deep into an « unfuckwithable career path », Kerrang! hears « a chaotic masterpiece » that digs into the deepest emotion, and singles out a closing three-song streak « to rival anything from the Converge catalogue ». Thrash, powerviolence, grind, sludge: it all fuses seamlessly.
The most measured voices come from the generalists: Pitchfork (7.4) describes shifts between « blistering political bloodlettings » and moody reckonings with mortality, while PopMatters and Slant (7/10) mostly hear a return to the grammar Converge itself codified. In other words: the worst thing anyone says about this record is that it sounds like Converge. Verdict: 8.5, and the bar for everyone else this year.
