Hello fellow Sputters, here is February’s release of the month. Unsurprisingly, Converge has won (deservedly so) and our brother jrlikestodance has prepared a blurb for us!

“At this point in their career, what does Converge have left to prove? They dominated the metalcore genre in the 2000s with groundbreaking releases then further experimented with melody to expand their sound throughout the 2010s. Starting the 2020s with a collab album as adventurous as Bloodmoon, this left fans asking, “What happens next?” With Love Is Not Enough this is a refinement of everything they’ve done in their career up to this point in a concise 31 minute package. In a way this is a “back to basics” album, but given their track record it is almost refreshing in a sense. You still have your mosh ready cuts like “Amon Amok”, “Force Meets Presence” and the title track where you can envision the pit opening in your mind. However, this is Converge and you know they will also embrace the dynamics of their sound. The band taps into their always tasty sludgy influences on “Gilded Cage” and tugs on your heartstrings with powerful songs like “Make Me Forget You” and “We Were Never the Same”. Having these cuts at the end of the album is almost like a reward for surviving the onslaught of hard riffs and breakdowns without compromising the intensity of the record. The briefness of this album has you ready to fire it up again and again and reminds us that Converge will always be a hardcore band before anything else. I find that admirable and respectable, as a band this tenured still does not forget where they came from.”