35 years in, Converge are still the most intense band in the room

There is heavy, and then there is Converge.

For 35 years the Massachusetts band — vocalist Jacob Bannon, guitarist-producer Kurt Ballou, and a rhythm section built like industrial machinery — have been the gold standard for hardcore taken to its logical, terrifying extreme. They didn't so much invent metalcore and mathcore as define how serious they could be.

The case rests, as it always has, on one record.

Jane Doe (2001) is routinely named one of the greatest heavy albums ever made — a breakup record so violent and so precise that twenty years of bands have tried to follow it and mostly failed. Everything Converge does is measured against it.

By Axe to Fall (2009) they'd shown the intensity could mutate without softening. And now, improbably, deep into their fourth decade:

Hum of Hurt (2026) is the sound of a band who could coast and flatly refuse to. The reviews — some of the best of their late career — agree: the fury is still controlled, still purposeful, still theirs alone. Most bands this old are nostalgia acts. Converge are still a threat.

For the uninitiated

If you've never gone near this corner of music, Hum of Hurt is a punishing place to start — begin with Jane Doe and work forward. But rate it below either way: heavy music lives and dies on the people willing to argue about it, and Converge have always given them plenty to argue about.