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Grade 2
Isle Of Wight punks Grade 2 wrestle with a whirlwind coming-of-age on rollercoaster fourth album Talk About it… Grief. Growth. Grafting every step of the way. Twelve years since they first cranked amps as schoolkids rattling their music room out on the Isle of Wight, Grade 2 have plenty to talk about. From seeing dreams dangling precariously during COVID to blasting back with 2023’s self-titled third LP, frontman Sid Ryan, guitarist Jack Chatfield and drummer Jacob Hull looked to have claimed their place on top of the world. But storming festivals like Rock am Ring and rubbing shoulders with heroes like Rancid and Guns N’ Roses was only half the story. Offstage, the trio were dealing with the quiet dissonance of island life back at their parents’ places, finding time for romantic relationships and plotting the path for-ward through a world increasingly going to shit. Rollercoaster fourth album Talk About It is a chronicle of every tribulation and triumph. “The title-track was initially called Communication, a song about how men don’t talk about the things that really matter to them,” explains Sid. “But it became Talk About It, which sums up the whole album, touching on every emotion that you feel while being in a band, from love to loss to personal turmoil to ambition. It’s a coming-of-age story about Grade 2 entering adulthood...” From dealing with a dog-eat-dog music industry on Cut Throat and learning to live life at 100mph with Crash And Burn to confronting political toxicity on Rotten, paying tribute to their waterlocked home with Smugglers Haven and processing the pain of loss heartfelt closer Otherside, it’s a wild ride. And a compelling first step on the next chapter from one of modern punk’s brightest lights. “This is everything we’ve been through,” Sid smiles, bittersweetly, “but we’re still here!”
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Converge
You feel it before you hear it. When you hear it, you can’t un-hear 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. Windsor, Ontario. It’s been haunting the population of Taos, New Mexico, for decades. It’s been linked to suicides in the UK. Not everyone can hear it. No one knows where it’s coming from. They call it The Hum. Converge have taken this mysterious real-world phenomenon and re-imagined it as a physical manifestation of human suffering. “What if the Hum is the culmination of all the pain in the world creating an audible hum across the universe?” vocalist and lyricist Jacob Bannon posits. “Something noticeable to others operating on a similar frequency.” Hum of Hurt follows Love Is Not Enough as Converge’s second full-length release of 2026. Like its predecessor, the album presents a bleak but empathetic assessment of the human condition and its ongoing deterioration. Unlike Love Is Not Enough, the songs are rawer and more exposed. “When we got together to write, we ended up with a lot of material,” Bannon says. “We realized it was two separate albums.” Hum of Hurt is a different record than Love is Not Enough, but just as volatile and potent. “It’s not part two,” Bannon points out. “The only unifying thing we talked about when we started working on this entire project was, ‘Let’s make a noise rock record.’ But we never really did. The first one isn’t a noise rock record. This one has moments, maybe, but it’s not a noise rock record either. It feels more like an emotional hardcore record than the first one, which is probably more metal leaning. Really, we just gave birth to another Converge record.” Opener “Slip the Noose” kicks off with a furious cannonade from drummer Ben Koller before launching into the kind of short, grinding frenzy that wouldn’t feel out of place on Jane Doe. “Doom in Bloom” is raw and bloody, as guitarist Kurt Ballou’s spiky riffs scrape against Nate Newton’s bass and Koller’s drums. You can practically hear Bannon’s throat getting sore. “It’s just fucking dark and right at you,” he says of the track. “Lyrically, I’m talking about how middle-aged introspection doesn’t always bring light. Maturity doesn’t heal wounds.” “Dream Debris” is a gripping, doomy epic born out of a single note that builds to a booming crescendo. “It’s got a lot of twists and turns but it’s dense and heavy and really simple, and that was by design,” Bannon says. “When we were working on it, we were saying, ‘Does it need anything else?’ We decided it didn’t because it’s just so fucking heavy.” Lyrically, “Dream Debris” has at least one line that will ring in the heads of listeners everywhere: There’s nothing to win if there’s no one to lose. “I go on a bit of a rant in this song,” Bannon says. “But the idea is that passion withers, and only the broken and beaten and worn out will stay in places of discomfort because they have nowhere else to go.” Then there’s the title track, which is one of the most propulsive and metallic songs on the record. Thematically, Bannon examines the prices we pay for the lives we pursue. “I’ve given 35 years of my life to creating art and music in some way,” he says. “There’re parts of that I really cherish, and I appreciate the home and support structure this community has given me. But I’ve also been shackled to this for 35 years. I don’t do anything else. In a way, I’m not the man I want to be. I want to work on my deficiencies, and this is me acknowledging that.” The album also features a new rendition of “I Won’t Let You Go,” the original version of which was recorded for the 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077. “When we recorded that years ago, Ben did the drums in California and then we put it all together here,” Bannon explains. “It didn’t have that room energy that happens when we’re all together. This version is demented and wild and a really uncomfortable listen. It feels right.” Hum of Hurt was recorded and mixed by Kurt Ballou at God City in Salem, Massachusetts, with engineering assistance from Zach Weeks. Bannon and renowned UK artist Thomas Hooper collaborated on the album artwork. “These are songs about working through hurt, through pain, both emotional and physical,” Bannon says. “That’s a very real psychological energy that we all experience. If I’m feeling that, maybe I’m resonating something that is being felt by others. Even if I try to mask it, it’s still there. Maybe the hum is everybody that’s operating on that frequency. We’re all feeling something.”