Converge’s Jacob Bannon Addresses Long Awaited New Album

Converge are back with their first “core-four” studio album since 2017 and singer Jacob Bannon spoke with Full Metal Jackie on her weekend radio show about the band’s long awaited return with Love Is Not Enough (due Feb. 13) and what is driving the new music.

Admitting the pandemic threw off their usual schedule and the collaborative Bloodmoon: 1 album with Chelsea Wolfe provided a unique opportunity, Bannon shares that they’re now in catch-up mode and the timing was very much right for a new album.

“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,” he shares. “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 group also leaned into a very “real” approach to making the record. “We wanted things to be potent, to be pure, to be as close to the raw nerve of things as possible. And that’s a quality that we’ve just absorbed from our decades of dedication in the punk rock and hardcore world, just doing things in a no frills, no BS capacity,” he adds.

Within the chat, Bannon talks about their commitment to creating personal music, speaks on the consistently “ramping up” nature of the album’s material and speaks to the idea of regret and being more present from their song “We Were Never the Same.”

In addition, Bannon addresses what lessons he’s learned over his three decades plus in the band and comments on the potential for another Chelsea Wolfe collaboration.

Check out more of the chat below.

It’s Full Metal Jackie. On the show with us this week, we’ve got Jake Bannon from Converge. It’s a big year for Converge, who are returning with their latest album, Love Is Not Enough. And that is a powerful statement to make, one which also frames the first single and title track. It’s a song about life’s bumps and bruises and growing from that. As an artist, do you feel you’ve had to go through your own bumps and bruises in life to get to a point where you could address the turmoil of life so eloquently as you’ve done on this album?

Well, that’s a great question. I feel really fortunate that I have a place to put complex personal issues that I’m dealing with, within my own self and within my own life, that I have a place to put those things and work through those things in an artistic way that frees me. Not fully, but it frees me from the burden of those things alone. I have the ability to have a place to put those emotions.

I don’t think it’s necessary. I think that I would still be an artist without that. But it’s part of the fabric as to who we are as a band.

We’ve always written personal songs and always connected our lives to our songs in that way. So, we don’t really know any different as a band. It’s sort of been kind of baked into how we approach things, for sure.

Converge, “Love Is Not Enough”

Jake, it’s been a minute for Converge, just shy of five years since the collaborative Bloodmoon 1 album with Chelsea Wolfe and nine years since the last Converge only album. Can you speak to the process of making this album? Was there a moment where it became now we know what this album is and what it’s about?

Absolutely. As you said, it’s been a long time, right? But for us, and I think for many folks, time has changed. Our our perception of time has changed drastically since we experienced sort of the COVID pause in our lives, right? When the world shut down, it stopped our ability to do the things that we were doing functionally as a band for a while.

Since then, that basically took a year and a half from our band. Then we did the Bloodmoon album sort of in that timeframe as well. It was super challenging to do. We did it in a satellite way, where we were like recording on different coasts and kind of not really being in the same room together. And that was a cool experience. It was very different, but it was just super challenging. And it was something that we just never had that experience ever.

Since then, we’ve kind of been playing catch up with our schedules, with tours and with future plans. And 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. We need to make something out of all this tumult and sort of frustration and darkness that was surrounding the world and our lives.

And so we gave ourselves to writing material and that’s basically what you have here.

It’s Full Metal Jackie. We’ve got Jake Bannon from Converge on the show with us this week. Jake, you’ve described this album as a record that is “ramping up.” At the time of this interview, fans have heard the opening and closing songs on the record, seemingly providing you with the start and end point. How fun was sequencing this record and keeping it at a pace that seemed to keep the energy and spirit continually building? Was it a natural process or were there other thoughts in how to present this album?

It’s interesting because of the art of making an album when your band’s a democracy. Our band, there’s four members in our band. We all want to move forward.

I actually looked at it today, there’s nine different sequences that we created for the record between the four of us. Then there’s sort of like a grand compromise that happens. Iin that process, we all have certain goals. We all have certain things that we want to do with the material.

But the first three or four songs were nearly the same on all of our sequences. So we knew that we all collectively wanted the energy to keep moving. We wanted it to have this constant ramp up and it was happening within those first few songs. So it set a blueprint to how to structure the rest of the stuff after we started hearing everyone else’s versions of things.

We’re like, “Okay, we’re all in agreeance.” So now we kind of know where we want to go, and then it’s all about massaging the material into place after the fact.

But again, it is by design. There’s a lot of debate. There’s a lot of sort of loving but complicated conversations. I wouldn’t say arguments, but just us all kind of pleading our cases as to why we think we want things to be a certain way. So there’s definitely a lot of work that we put into it. It’s very conscious and it’s very deliberate, for sure.

One talking point that has come up in promotion of this record is the band’s commitment to realism in your music. How do you ensure that something passes your test, and is there something you’re seeing in modern music that’s not meeting that standard that you strive to reach?

We’ve been a band for a really long time. I’ll just say three decades, because it’s 30 years or so, right? I’m 49 years old now. In that time, we’ve seen so many musical trends sort of come and go, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres sort of rise up and be at the forefront of things for a while and then it sort of dissipates and kind of goes away.

We’ve never latched onto those things. We’ve always sort of blazed our own trail as to what we want to do and how we want to do it. Artistically, professionally, all of those things. And that’s very important to us, that attention to detail.

I’m going off on a bit of a tangent, but, yeah, it’s just super, super important to us to be real, to have things that are sort of free of decoration and free of filler.

There’s songs in this record that are just under two minutes or close to two minutes. We could’ve made them three and four minutes long. We could’ve added multiple verses, but they simply didn’t need them. We wanted things to be potent, to be pure, to be as close to the raw nerve of things as possible. And that’s a quality that we’ve just absorbed from our decades of dedication in the punk rock and hardcore world, just doing things in a no frills, no BS capacity.

Jake, this band was formed in 1990. The first album came in 1994. As with any career, there’s moments you love and those you’d like to move on from, and even this far in, it’s still a learning experience. What period within the band’s career do you feel you grew or learned the most as an artist, and what did you learn about yourself to make that advance?

Interesting. Well, there’s always perpetual growth that’s happening. There’s always a maturation that’s happening. But I would say I’ve taken lessons from nearly every tour, from every record, from every sort of thing that we’ve ever done.

Early on, on some of my first tours, I did a tour in 1994 going into 1995, that I had to just learn how to co-exist in a cargo van with five other guys with all our, our gear packed in there, and then you have no sort of concept of personal space anymore. You just start to lose it a little bit, and it forces you to sort of grow up and really toughen yourself up a bit. You get through those moments.

Then we started doing tours after that were just really long, really big grinds, and I really started to appreciate the dedication to the band by the other members. I grew a lot from that. We all kind of put in our time in this and we really value it and really respect each other.

READ MORE: Converge Drummer ‘Lucky to Be Alive’ After Harrowing Accident

Early on, in like the 2002, 2003, when we were touring a lot, I really learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about the dedication to the art form of the other members and that was always something that really moved me and connected with me.

We’ve seen so many things come and go, but we’re still here. It’s still the core four and I just cherish that every day.

Jake, Let’s talk about the album closer, “We Were Never The Same.” You address the idea of coming to mourn at the end of one’s life, but why we don’t cherish. It’s a not so subtle kick in the butt that time and distance can get away from us. Having the experience that inspired this song and being able to translate into song, do you feel this has helped you be more present within your own life?

As a person, I try to be as present as possible. And I try to be as aware as possible as how I affect my surroundings, how my mood and behavior affects things. I try to cherish the things that are around me as much as possible.

When you lose loved ones and people that are close to you, and you’re greatly affected, it’s hard not to feel that and do a little bit of analysis and just really see where your strengths and weaknesses are as a person, within friendships, relationships, family, all of that.

But the one sort of through point there is that I think there’s always a sting of regret when we lose people close to us when we know that we didn’t say all the things we needed to say to them before we lost them, and before we lost the ability to communicate and just co-exist.

It’s an honest question. We come together at times of loss, but we don’t come together when we need each other the most. And I think that’s a sort of universal sadness that is relatable sort of across the board.

I don’t really offer a sort of resolution in the song as much as I’m just letting the world know that we do run out of time and we need to do better.

Converge, “We Were Never the Same”

Jake, we’ve got this tour coming up with Poison the Well in April. While we’re on the status updates, there was plenty of love for you pairing with Chelsea Wolfe on Bloodmoon 1. That leaves the open-ended question on Bloodmoon 2. Is that something somewhere in the thought process or very much on the back burner until schedules can align again?

The way that we work on things, we always we work on everything at once. We absolutely will continue with Bloodmoon, but it’s just a logistical thing right now. We’re in the middle of this record, or the very beginning of this record. Chelsea and Ben made a new Chelsea record a year ago, and they’re just kind of finishing touring on that. So it definitely will happen. It’s just a matter of getting the planets aligned.

But 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.

Awesome. You’ve got a full plate and I’m very excited for all things to come. This tour with Poison the Well, once again, kicking off in April. The new record is called Love Is Not Enough. Jake Bannon of Converge with us. Thank you so much. It’s always great to chat with you and I really appreciate your time. Looking forward to seeing you out there.

Thanks to Converge’s Jake Bannon for the interview. Get pre-order options for Love Is Not Enough and touring details via the band’s website. You can also stay up to date with Converge through their Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube accounts. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie’s weekend radio show here.

See which of Converge’s albums made Loudwire’s Best Metal Albums of the Last 25 Years in the gallery below.