Converge have revealed the details for their second new album of the year, “Hum Of Hurt.” The effort will be available on June 5 and it will include the following tracks:
01. “Slip The Noose”
02. “Doom In Bloom”
03. “It Only Gets Worse”
04. “Detonator”
05. “I Won’t Let You Go”
06. “It’s Not Up To Us”
07. “Dream Debris”
08. “It Used To Matter”
09. “Hum Of Hurt”
10. “Nothing Is Over”
An official video for “Hum Of Hurt” can be seen below.
Vocalist Jacob Bannon commented:
“When we came together to write, we ended up with a wealth of material. As work progressed, we realized we had created two separate albums, and treated them as such.”
“It’s not a sequel. The unifying musical idea early on was, ‘Let’s make a noise rock album.’ But we never really did. The first one wasn’t. This one touches on that spirit, but it’s much more dynamic than that descriptor. To me, it leans more into being an emotional hardcore album, while ‘Love Is Not Enough’ feels more metal leaning album. In the end, we simply gave creative birth to another Converge record with its own unique identity and character.”
He also had the following to say about the single:
“I’ve given 35 years of my life to creating art and music. I appreciate the creative home and support this community has given, yet rarely is space left for anything else. These lyrics are me looking in a mirror, recognizing that I am not the man I want to be. I need change, and still have work to do.”
According to a press release, the title comes from a phenomenon called The Hum:
“You feel it before you hear it. And once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. A low, persistent noise throbbing in the background. Scientists say it registers between 30 and 40 hertz. It’s been heard in Ipswich, Massachusetts; Auckland, New Zealand; and Windsor, Ontario. It has haunted the population of Taos, New Mexico, for decades. It’s been linked to suicides in the U.K. Not everyone can hear it. No one knows where it’s coming from. They call it The Hum. Converge has taken this mysterious real-world phenomenon and reimagined it as a physical manifestation of human suffering.”
Bannon added:
“What if ‘The Hum’ is the culmination of all the pain in the world, creating an audible signal across the universe? Something noticeable to others operating on a similar emotional plane.”
He also discussed how it extended to the cover art:
“For the cover, I had a vision of an EKG signal fusing with some kind of volatile seismography. This amalgamation represents the conditions that would theoretically create a ‘Hum.’ Specifically the heart skips beats before dissolving into static. The signal is then interrupted by a seismic event at the center point of the cover. In conversation, I shared some of these ideas with artist Thomas Hooper, who offered to illustrate them using scientific diagrams as a source of inspiration. I then spent months creating a mixed media piece for the interior. The figures represent the five elements of our planet, or ‘Pancha Bhuta’: Prithvi (Earth), Ap (Water), Agni (Fire), Vayu (Air), and Akasha (Aether). I present them in the throws of chaos, as if the elements themselves are entangled in the Hum Of Hurt.”