Hookworms today announce The Hum, a new studio album due for release on Tuesday, November 11. The Hum comes eighteen months after the band’s debut album Pearl Mystic. The Hum will be available in vinyl, CD, and digital formats. There is also a limited pressing, deluxe edition of the album, featuring a die cut sleeve, 180g heavyweight transparent vinyl, a bonus 7” with new tracks and MP3 download.

The Hum takes the blueprint of Pearl Mystic – proto-punk, garage rock, Washington DC hardcore, 80’s British spacerock – and further stamps it with the band’s seal. Leaner, meaner and more propulsive thanks to the muscular playing of new drummer JN, the record boasts both the most straight-up punk song the band have written to date in eviscerating opener “The Impasse” (“we wanted it to sound like Suicide if they had a full band”, explains MJ) and moments of patient, widescreen beauty only hinted at previously.

“We were writing Pearl Mystic to an audience in the same way your diary has an audience”, says guitarist SS. “It’s written to one but if no one ever reads it that’s not a big deal. This time round though we knew we had a really clear audience, so The Hum is really about different freedoms and constraints – with Pearl Mystic the possibilities were almost too vast, this time around we had a much clearer idea of what the record should be like and that became freeing because we didn’t need to worry about its direction so much.”

That word “free” is a good way to approach The Hum, a record that could only be made by a band in total command of their personality. “It’s like that bit on Fugazi’s ‘Instrument’ documentary where Brendan Canty says that a jam they’ve got sounds ‘good, but not Fugazi,’” says MJ – “we sound more like Hookworms rather than anyone else on this record.”

The Hum Tracklisting

(November 11th, 2014 | Weird World)

01. The Impasse

02. On Leaving

03. iv

04. Radio Tokyo

05. Beginners

06. v

07. Off Screen

08. vi

Hookworms Tour Dates

Aug 30 – Dorset, UK – End Of The Road Festival

Sept 20 – Ardeche, France – Heart of Glass Festival

Oct 25 – Birmingham, UK – All Year’s Leaving Festival, Hare & Hounds

Oct 26 – Sheffield, UK – Queen’s Social Club

Oct 27 – Liverpool, UK – Liverpool Music Week, Kazimier

Oct 28 – London, UK – Tuffnel Park Dome

Oct 29 – Cardiff, UK – Clwb Ifor Bach

Oct 30 – Bristol, UK – Start The Bus

Oct 31 – Newcastle – Cluny 2

Nov 19 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club (album launch party)

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