When Converge released their eleventh album earlier this year, the critical and fan response was nearly universal: Love is Not Enough is the best Converge album in a long time. How long depends on what you like most about Converge, but Love Is Not Enough took the band’s sound back to their roots, recalling the sharp aggression of You Fail Me or Axe to Fall more than the moody atmospheres of All We Love We Leave Behind or Bloodmoon, Converge’s collab with Chelsea Wolfe.
It’s not even four months after Love is Not Enough and we have Hum of Hurt, Converge’s twelfth studio album. That’s a fast turnover for the art-metalcore heroes but what’s even more impressive about Converge’s 2026 output is the fact that the two albums sound so different.
Both records are shaved down considerably from Converge’s releases prior, finishing at just over 30 minutes each. Love Is Not Enough starts with four furious tracks, including the moshy “Bad Faith” and total sprint “Distract and Divide.” It takes until the fifth track before any attempt is made at slowing down, though they jump right back in with career high “Amon Amok.” Love Is Not Enough then peaks with “Force Meets Presence,” which serves as the sonic equivalent to a blunt object. There are three songs after, all setting a similar tone, with “Gilded Cage” even hinting at the noise rock-heavy style of the next album.
If Love is Not Enough was Converge’s scorched earth album, then Hum of Hurt is their brooding (but explosive) record. Both albums were recorded in the same session, which makes the stark differences all the more surprising.
“It was super fun to surprise people with a second Converge record this year,” guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou said earlier this year when discussing Hum of Hurt. “What happened was, there was a final sprint during the last round of writing where a lot more stuff got finished than we were expecting. We had to decide what to do with all this material. Nobody has the patience for a double album, the way that people listen to music now. They’re not gonna be able to absorb all these songs. And we really felt great about them, so we wanted every song to have the best chance it had to be heard.”
Lead single “Doom in Bloom” feels closer to Converge’s more recent albums: the skronky riffs and rhythms center vocalist Jacob Bannon’s pained vocals, which he aims at his and others’ inner pain. The best songs on the album—“It Only Gets Worse,” “Detonator,” the title track—take the trademark Converge crescendos and jumpy riffs and mix them with slanted, colorful riffs. Elsewhere, “I Won’t Let You Go” enters the record as one of the most unique-sounding riffs in the Converge canon and “Dream Debris” sees Converge slow down, making for the longest track on either record.
There are (probably) no more Converge records coming in 2026 but the releases of Love is Not Enough and Hum of Heart make it one of the biggest years in the band’s catalogue. Converge have never left but the albums are proof positive that they can, and will, continue to reshape themselves and their surroundings.
Hum of Heart and Love is Not Enough are available now.
The post Comparing & Killing: Converge versus Converge appeared first on Decibel Magazine.
