Converge
Hum Of Hurt
Epitaph
Converge’s second album of 2026 is remarkable in many ways. After their first offering, Love Is Not Enough, fans were left scratching their heads. Yes, it was good, and by any other band’s standards it was excellent, but this was Converge we were talking about. Where was the danger? Where were the obtuse rhythms? Where was the unbridled rage? And most importantly, why did it sound so clean and linear compared to previous outings? Not a hair was out of place, and, crucially, the omnipresent squall of feedback and noise was missing. Fans of the noisy, chaotic, off-the-rails Converge can rest easy now because ‘Hum Of Hurt’ is here to redress the balance.
With a markedly different production, the band we know, and love are back, scrambling brains and destroying convention in ways only they do best. ‘Slip The Noose’ comes roaring out of the gates and immediately brings you back in line with their best material, followed in quick succession by pummelling recent single ‘Doom In Bloom’ and the urgent stop-start dynamics of ‘ It Only Gets Worse’. Album highlight ‘Detonator’ practically has us punching the air in jubilation that our favourite hardcore band are back and all is right with the world. Then we were left scratching our heads even more. Why was ‘Love Is Not Enough’ so different? What were the cheeky homages all for? Were the lyrics Easter eggs for fans to work out? We certainly spent a good few hours deciphering whether some Enigma code-level stuff was going on. It wasn’t even that the previous album was radically different; it just didn’t hit nearly as hard as ‘Hum Of Hurt’ or display this level of artistry. Let’s be clear here, ‘Hum Of Hurt’ in our opinion stands shoulder to shoulder with Converge’s best work, and it’s an absolute triumph. The fact that we’ve had to sit on this information for a while felt like what we imagine it would have been like knowing how Game of Thrones ended in advance. Certainly, we have had to duck out of a few discussions recently to avoid giving spoilers away.
Was ‘Love Is Not Enough’ their version of a red herring? There are a lot of question marks in this review, and we feel like this was always the plan. As Converge make sure, we’ve absolutely got the message with the visceral beating delivered by ‘Nothing Is Over,’ they leave us in no uncertain terms knowing that whatever it was that they were saying, it was certainly very effective, and they’ll probably not tell you exactly why they did it.
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Reviewed By George Miller