CONVERGE's JACOB BANNON On Decision To Release Two Full-Length Albums In 2026: 'Why Not? Life's Short'

In a new interview with "The Pit" on Minnesota's 93Xradio station, CONVERGE vocalist and lyricist Jacob Bannon spoke about the band's decision to release two full-length albums in 2026, "Hum Of Hurt" and "Love Is Not Enough", via Deathwish/Epitaph. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, we've been a band for a long time, and we like forward movement. We like being productive. The last handful of years have been pretty challenging in terms of doing that. With that said, we have been productive. We've been touring a lot. We released a CONVERGE 'Bloodmoon'[: I]' album. We did some touring around that, or at least some shows. We released a deluxe version of our record, and we basically made up for a lot of lost time after COVID in terms of touring and just sort of refilling our schedule. Once we got into the studio, we just started recording everything we had at that time, and we didn't really have a goal to make two albums specifically; we just wanted to document what we had. And as we started creating the material and getting it down on tape, it started to kind of become two albums on its own. You started grouping songs together that you feel are sonically or thematically kind of tied. It could be a technical thing, a tuning issue, or we think that song A should go into song C. And eventually, it started working itself out naturally to just become two albums, and so we just went for it. In terms of the timing, doing them all at once, why not? Life's short. You only have so much time to do stuff, and I wanna make sure that when I am no longer able to do what I do physically that I gave it everything I had when I could. And that's my mentality, and I think that's our collective mentality as a band."

Asked if "Hum Of Hurt" and "Love Is Not Enough" are "companions of each other or just entirely separate statements", Jacob said: "They're statements on their own. They're companion pieces to one another just as much as our entire catalog is a companion piece to each other, effort that we've put in, in a recorded effort. So they're all related. They're all personal stories. They're all personal reflections of our lives. With that said, that's no different than anything else that we've ever done. They just happen to be four months apart."

"Hum Of Hurt" is distinct from "Love Is Not Enough", but just as volatile and potent.

"It's not a sequel," Bannon explained when "Hum Of Hurt" was first announced in April. "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."

"Hum Of Hurt" was recorded and mixed by Kurt Ballou at GodCity in Salem, Massachusetts, with engineering assistance from Zach Weeks. Bannon and renowned U.K. artist Thomas Hooper collaborated on the album artwork.

Jacob said: "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."

Photo by Jason Zucco