REVIEW: Converge - Hum of Hurt

Two albums in the space of a few months? From one of the best bands to ever do it? Count us in. CONVERGE are icons, heroes in the world of uncompromisingly heavy music. Having already put out a contender for album of the year with Love Is Not Enough earlier this year, we’re now lucky enough to be treated to a double dose of the esteemed metalcore collective in Hum of Hurt, a more noise-inflected release rather than the metallic -core sound of the former.

Right off the bat, we get a foaming-at-the-mouth Jacob Bannon losing his mind on Slip the Noose, a DILLINGER-esque angular, mathy noise track that already shows off the essential sonic differences between this album and the last. Doom in Bloom slows down slightly with a groovy intro riff that cuts off for a relatively sparse verse, and this less claustrophobic style continues for the majority of the track. Third on the release is It Only Gets Worse, which alternates between sounding rather like the frantic 2000’s CONVERGE we all adore, and the more groove-laden musicality of this specific release that - whether we hear more of it in future or not - is a sound the band have taken to admirably, mirroring super group BETTER LOVERS in many aspects.

Detonator starts off as the most immediately obvious song in its differences from the conventional CONVERGE catalogue; its wider open channels and gruff semi-spoken word style vocals with a much less all-encompassing atmosphere lets the emotions found within bare themselves more cleanly, to potent effect. This one is for the CHAT PILE fans for certain, being only the unhinged Southern drawl of Raygun Busch’s vocals away from their next LP. I Won’t Let You and It’s Not Up to Us are back into the more aggressive side of things, before Dream Debris rips a six minute hole in your life that you’ll never want to get back.

The final three tracks exist both as individual songs and as one larger piece. The way It Used to Matter flows into the title track, which gracefully evolves into closer Nothing is Over, makes for an astounding listen. Lasting a total of eleven minutes between the three, it’s a resounding statement that caps off a brilliant - and different - album from one of the best bands around. With moments of introspection and calm, segments of eerie, unsettling noise, and high-intensity scream-alongs, this is the best of everything we’ve heard condensed into a trio of fantastic songs that leave us on a real high.

Hum of Hurt could have felt like the secondary album to Love Is Not Enough. With the two so close together, and plenty of the songs being written at the same time across the pair of LP’s, it’s only natural to have suspected there to be potential for similarity, and maybe for this to feel like the B-side to the previous. That could not be further from the truth. Marking a significant change from their most recent release before this one, not only does this stand up as an excellent release in and of itself, it’s also entirely free from the shadow of anything before as it so clearly shows off how good CONVERGE are at fluidly shifting sound to one we’ve not heard much of from them, and doing it so so well to boot. Named for the supposed ‘sound of pain’ that’s been catalogued the world over, Hum of Hurt recognises its namesake and lives up to the haunting premise in style.

Score: 8/10

Hum of Hurt will be released on 5th June 2026 via Epitaph / Deathwish.

Words: Jasmine Longhurst

Photos: Nick Fancher