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.