Holy shit! Hum just up and drops a new album out of nowhere. Like what in the actual fuck?!
I love Hum so much I can’t even begin to describe it. The amount of times I have listened to 1995’s So You’d Prefer An Astronaut and 1998’s Downward Is Heavenward literally has to be in the hundreds for each album. Hum are the perfect, crunchy, dreamy, progressive, hard-hitting, riff monster, space-rock band.
Matt Talbott’s half-spoken half-sung vocals are perfect for their sound, Tim Lash is easily the most creative lead guitarist of all time, he seriously makes the craziest sounds and hooks. Jeff Dimpsey has the most solid thick sounding bass tone and does just enough to push all parties forward, and well Bryan St. Pere is easily one my most favorite drummers of all time, hard-hitting, loves his cymbals, and drives the fuck out of song tempos. He is a master!
Hum have been on and off randomly since their unfortunate demise in 2000. Ya’ll fuckin slept on Downward is Heavenward when it dropped. Dipshits! I didn’t! Please tell me I’m cool… Please.
The combination of a lack of interest in the album, nearly driving themselves insane recording it twice, and just painstakingly nitpicking at the album pretty much sucked all the life out off the band. Hum toured for a couple more years after Downward is Heavenward was released and rather than try and go through the process of recording another album and going through the same shit again they broke up. Such a Bummer.
Back in 2016, I remember hearing a rumor that they were working on a new album and as you would be with any band that hadn’t released anything new in almost two-decades I was nervous. Then, there were no updates so I figured they had Downward Is Heavenward‘ed themselves again, but while that may have happened, the new album actually appeared and holy fuck!
Hum’s Inlet is amazing.
(5 Points Album Reviews, despite the long as fuck intro above, is going to serve as a quick and easy-to-read format for me to review albums I’m interested in. Hopefully, I’ll chill on the intro next time so you the reader can get right to the point.)
1: Classic Line Up
It makes me so incredibly happy that the band still has its classic four-person lineup. Like so happy!
2: Inlet Is Heavy
Just crushingly heavy. The way that track two “In The Den” and track three “Desert Rambler” come out of the gates just Thanos’ your soul to dust. Inlet is so space-doomy!
3: Long Ass Songs
Hum songs have always hovered around the four to six-minute mark, but this time they are stretching it out a bit with half the albums eight songs coming in at over eight minutes and the shortest song at 4-minutes being the most uptempo song of the bunch, “Step Into You”. I think these longer song times really help the entire band get into the grooves of their magical riffs.
4: Tim Lash Has Ascended
As mentioned above Lash is one of the best “lead” guitarists of all time, but he has taken it to another level on Inlet. On each of the eight songs he flutters, floats, and screeches in and out of the heaviness. When things finally do calm down (“Folding”), which happens very rarely is when Lash’s guitar work really shines.
5: 22 Years
When bands take huge breaks in releases and get back together things very rarely turn out as good and even rarely turn out better. While I wouldn’t say that Inlet is better than my two favorite Hum albums it definitely stands shoulder to shoulder with those albums. It’s like the heavier wiser counterpart to the older albums.
I am so grateful that we have a new Hum album to obsess over and to listen to over and over hundreds of times. I’ve never had the opportunity to see Hum live and while a widespread U.S. tour is unlikely due to these guys’ probably already established lifestyles at home and their older age. I really hope that they do some sort of extended tour when or if things ever get back to normal because I need to finally see these dudes live. I need to hear the mind crushingly warm heavy of Inlet in person before I die.