Hum of Hurt was originally concepted to be Converge’s version of a noise rock album. In contrast to the first half of 2026 where the heavy music heroes returned after a nine year spell of silence with the excellent metalcore recharge, Love Is Not Enough, emotions bristle more brutalist on a rare second album in one year gift unto us on their 11th studio album.

While frontman Jacob Bannon renders the listen as being one “leans more into being an emotional hardcore album,” it’s without a doubt a much harder and louder experience than your usual sounds from that corner of the scene. To dos so, the listen matches the maddening reverberation in which the album title references. Queue the existential reckoning, with highlights like “Slip the Noose”, its title track, and “It Only Get Worse” more boldly carving up the surface of the psyche through guitarist and producer Kurt Ballou’s axe to grind and the void-opening craters of drummer Ben Koller and bassist Nate Newton.

Meanwhile, “Detonator” and “Dream Debris” are headier examples within Converge’s cannon of what happens when the Boston rockers apply the same mind-warping characteristics to their sonic range. “March headlong, take no cover / We must rage for the dying light,” Bannon delivers with one final blow on its last act of rebellion against the void, “Nothing Is Over”. Whereas the ringing frequency of our own paranoid decay may always be resonant in our heads, the band’s undying commitment to railing against it is always in their periphery. Hum of Hurt turns all of that pain into a raw superpower.

Highlights: “Hum of Hurt”, “Dream Debris”, “Nothing Is Over”

Converge’s Hum of Hurt is available now on Deathwish Inc. / Epitaph Records.