Hardcore and metal titans Converge will release their first full studio album from the band's classic "core-four" lineup since 2017 with Love Is Not Enough, due out February 13 — and according to vocalist Jacob Bannon, the record arrives not a moment too soon.
Speaking with Full Metal Jackie on her weekend radio show, Bannon reflected on the band's long road back to a traditional Converge album, admitting that time, circumstance, and global upheaval all played major roles in shaping the new material.
"Before you know it, five years, six years pass and we're realizing that not only do we want to make a record, but we need in our soul to make a record," Bannon explained. "We need to make something out of all this tumult and sort of frustration and darkness that was surrounding the world and our lives."
The last several years have been anything but typical for Converge. The pandemic upended their usual creative rhythm, while 2022's Bloodmoon: 1, a collaborative album with Chelsea Wolfe, pushed the band into unfamiliar territory. Recorded remotely across coasts, the project was both creatively rewarding and logistically taxing.
"Our perception of time has changed drastically since we experienced sort of the COVID pause in our lives," Bannon said. "When the world shut down, it stopped our ability to do the things that we were doing functionally as a band for a while."
That disruption, he noted, effectively erased a year and a half of momentum. "Then we did the Bloodmoon album sort of in that timeframe as well. It was super challenging to do… recording on different coasts and kind of not really being in the same room together. It was a cool experience, but something we just never had before."
Since then, Converge have been "playing catch up" — juggling tours, rebuilding schedules, and slowly reconnecting with the instinctive, in-room collaboration that has defined their most celebrated records. Eventually, the need for a new album became unavoidable.
"We gave ourselves to writing material and that's basically what you have here," Bannon said of Love Is Not Enough, which stands as the band's first Converge-only album in nearly a decade.
The conversation also touched on the future of Bloodmoon, with Bannon confirming that a follow-up is very much alive — just waiting for the stars to align. "We absolutely will continue with Bloodmoon, but it's just a logistical thing right now," he shared, citing touring schedules and Chelsea Wolfe's recent solo album cycle.
"We have lots of ideas, lots of material, lots of excitement between the seven members of Converge Bloodmoon, and we will absolutely be doing that at some time down the road."
