“Love is essential, but it’s not everything.” Truer words are rarely spoken, and in this case the speaker is Converge vocalist and artist-in-residence Jacob Bannon. The Massachusetts band’s time-honoured melding of hardcore and metal hits a new high with Love Is Not Enough, arguably their most ferocious—and musical—album yet. “There’s probably two places where I feel we let things breathe a little bit, but otherwise it’s quite dark and smothering and intense the whole way,” Bannon tells Apple Music. “It’s unrelenting and super raw the entire time, and that’s by design, because that’s how we feel. That’s what’s resonating in our collective spirit right now.” Lyrically, Love Is Not Enough revolves around that very idea: As humanity’s dark forces close in on every one of us, we’ll need more than emotional affirmation and positive relationships to get through it. “We live in this perpetual state of chaos and panic right now, and I think that all of us feel that in some way,” Bannon says. “And it’s been like this for quite some time. I don’t see that being absent from any of our lives anytime soon. The album is a mirror of that.” Below, he comments on each song. “Love is Not Enough” “This song expands on the idea of being empathetic and compassionate and just trying to not get dragged down in the muck and mire of the modern world that surrounds us. It’s a pretty universal message. You can’t just say everything is sunny and awesome and bright and pure, because it’s not. It’s far from that. So there’s a realism there that I think sets a tone for the rest of the album.” “Bad Faith” “None of us like feeling helpless in the world. I was watching someone I care about a lot being powerless in a bad situation. They’re just wounded, and it was a terrible thing to experience. As much as I can, I want to be there for someone I care about. But there was quite literally nothing I could do. I could support emotionally and psychologically, but I couldn’t resolve the things they were presented with. And that feeling of helplessness permeated through everything for a really long time.” “Distract and Divide” “If any song has some of my literal opinions about what’s going on in modern society, it’s this one. I’ve never really sat down to write a political song in any way, and this song is not necessarily about politics but about the malleability of human beings and all the games and charades that we experience day in and day out through social networks, through news outlets, through just taking in any information at all. Nothing’s what it seems. We all take the bait, we always look the wrong way, and we’re usually too late.” “To Feel Something” “I’m not going to lie, I’m a fucked-up person. I go to work every day; I try to be the best husband, father, friend that I can be. But oftentimes I’m falling apart inside, and I have to suppress a lot of the things that I struggle with as a person, because airing them out wouldn’t really do much of a service for me in my real life. So I tend to disconnect and shut down. The song is about that and being overwhelmed by my own fears and insecurities and stressors to the point where I feel numb to everything. I end up trying to do anything to feel something, and I think creating music and art is part of that.” “Beyond Repair” “This is the lone instrumental on this record. When we took a break from tracking other songs, [guitarist] Kurt [Ballou] wanted to try an idea. He ended up doing this in one long, dramatic take. I just sat behind him on the couch and watched him, and it was a magical thing to see. It was so intense and so personal, I almost felt voyeuristic in a way. When he finished, he said, ‘That riff made me feel terrible about myself.’ And I completely understood what he was saying. It was such an honest, creative moment that it was like a mirror: It shows you things that you’re not necessarily comfortable with.” “Amon Amok” “Demons are real. I don’t mean beasts from the fantasy realm, but there are real things in this world that have a bit of malevolence to them. In demonology, Amon has a variety of roles, but he’s essentially the demon of life. I paired the two words together because sometimes it feels like demons have run amok. I’m talking about life in the present day. There’s no safe place for anybody in this world with any belief system. This world is very unforgiving, and I think the title encapsulates a lot of what’s currently happening in modern life.” “Force Meets Presence” “This came from an idea I was exploring early on about how conflict breeds force and then force is wielded like a weapon while presence, symbolically, is something that’s unshakeable. Force keeps moving; presence keeps growing. They both forever expand and no one wins. It’s just violence. You can take that metaphor and apply it to so many things in life. When we try to force some sort of change, whether it be personally, psychosocially, culturally, but then you need what could be identified as presence, things change dramatically.” “Gilded Cage” “This song is about the pharmaceutical industry and the opiate epidemic and how it’s tied to so many other things. It’s a string you could pull forever, and you’d never get to the end of it. It’s a trillion-dollar industry with no ethical boundaries that preys upon those who need help the most. It makes shells of people; it destroys them and destroys their relationships and the loved ones around them. It’s super tragic and it’s a hundred per cent avoidable. It’s not an asteroid shower. It’s a prescription. Somebody’s profiting at the end of the day, and even when they’re held accountable, it doesn’t make up for the sadness and despair and the fabric of generations that have been ripped apart.” “Make Me Forget You” “Over time, relationships fall apart. Without maintenance, they erode, and eventually regrets sink in. I think the older we get, the more familiar that feeling becomes. This song is real talk about that subject, with some self-reflection on trying to not let that happen. We always think that there’s going to be time to just spend time with someone we care about, but it never happens. And then before you know it, years go by and you’re at different places in your life and you will never connect. It’s just gone. It’s a song about things we’ve let slip by.” “We Were Never the Same” “I had some time to spare while I was waiting in a parking lot before a funeral, because you never want to be late for a funeral. I had all this energy that I needed to do something with, but I couldn’t run around the block or anything because I was in a suit. So I started writing some lines that became the anchor for this song: ‘Why do we gather to mourn but not to cherish?’ It’s almost expanding on the concept of ‘Make Me Forget You’, like, I’m at the end of the line and it’s too late. You can’t say ‘I love you’ to someone when they’re gone. It’s coming to terms with trying to be a better person, a better family member, a better friend, as much as I can.”