The second album this year from metalcore pioneers Converge is named for a mysterious, pulsing, low-frequency ambient drone, likened by those who hear it to a diesel engine, an idling airplane, or a kind of inescapable torture. Lead vocalist Jacob Bannon came across the phenomenon when researching his own tinnitus and reimagined it as a culmination of all the pain and suffering in human existence. Appropriately, Hum of Hurt may be the heaviest album Converge have made: lean and sinewy, direct and intentional, stripped of any embellishments.
Drawn from the same writing sessions that produced Love Is Not Enough, released in February, Hum of Hurt is the darker and more brooding sibling. The bewildering time signatures that worked to scramble records like Jane Doe are still present, but they’re deployed to different ends, consumed by massive grooves. “It Only Gets Worse” switches measures a handful of times but always feels intuitive, as though the tightly-wound rhythm section is following Bannon’s vocals when he empties his lungs on the chorus. “Doom in Bloom” is about as blunt as Converge can get, its bludgeoning four-note riff hammered in by half-pace drums in the refrain. Fittingly, the frequency is lower, too; Nate Newton’s bass is an enormous presence in the depths of the mix, all lumbering menace, not least during a minute-long, one-note solo to open the doomy “Dream Debris.” Even when guitarist Kurt Ballou’s noise screeches over the top, the low end remains like a persistent hum.
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This more deliberate approach allows more space for Bannon’s voice, which now expresses a wider range of agonies: venom-throated screams, staccato rasps, despairing monologues. His lyrics are easier to pick out on first listen than ever before, particularly on the handful of hooks that stud the record. The slower pace of the borderline-catchy end to “Detonator” and the thudding double-kick verses of the anthemic title track allow him to enunciate with a terrifying clarity. “There is no end in sight/Without the will to fight,” he spits at the end of “It’s Not Up to Us.”
The most striking moments come when Bannon sounds exhausted, as he does on the verses to “Doom in Bloom” and “I Won’t Let You Go,” a remake of their fan-favorite contribution to the video game Cyberpunk 2077. Converge has often nodded to Fugazi in interviews, but in these moments it’s easier than ever to hear the shadow of Guy Picciotto’s voice in Bannon’s desperation. Clearer too is the animating force behind his lyrics, carried forward from hardcore and post-hardcore, that self-improvement is vital and even political. Over and over again, he seems afraid of nothing more than himself and the damage he can do. “Sometimes the agony is just too much/I do not want to hurt/I never thought that I would be too late,” and “I want to be the better me/That you deserve to finally see,” he screams on back-to-back tracks in the middle of the record. This is Picciotto’s “Once inside, I’m gonna tear/’Til there’s nothing left to find” at its extremes.
