Love Is Not Enough is already one of those albums that’s sparked an endless and vicious round of arguments in music forums about whether it stands up to Converge’s past glories. It’s what happens when a fiercely beloved cult band returns with a new record. And Converge is definitely one of those bands. Both within the broader field of turn-of-the-century heavy music and specifically in math-influenced metalcore, Converge was the band — the one that, if you caught onto them early enough, became your whole life. And circa 2001, for those unsatisfied with either the performative thrashings of nu-metal or the dead-on-arrival grunge and punk scenes, everything there was to be artfully furious about in life lay in the pummeling riffs of Jane Doe.

For those fans, then, Love Is Not Enough should feel like happily stumbling back into an old beloved dive bar that somehow survived gentrification — all the aspects that defined Converge’s dense, cloistered, dizzying ragers are present and accounted for. The disorienting chord changes and droning interludes. The growled and screeched lyrics that invoke a continuous end of the world. The distressing pop elements and clean vocals that rear their heads in brief flashes, only to be usurped by a caterwaul of technical noise just a few bars later. The sandpaper textures and oozing sludge. It’s all still here.

Leaving aside the always-present, always-needless Jane Doe comparisons, Love Is Not Enough offers a small epiphany. Because somewhere in that crazed, relentless mash of implosive blast beats, distorted polyrhythms, marrow-rattling howls, and massive low end, you realize that Converge were always this good.