From the get go, it is clear that Die Humane‘s debut album is something different and that a lot of work and talent has gone into it. If those tags up there did not already give it away, The Grotesque is not the usual EBM dance music mixed with Pop as you might expect. Rather, this band alternates between repetitive numbers that recalls Rob Zombie at his heaviest and slightly progressive ambient numbers that include some 80’s sounding saxophone skronk. The elements start to mix at around “Shell Shock”, where the saxophone hangs around some alternative metal that could have belonged on a Korn album and a short emotive solo adds flavor to the repetitive rhythm around it. The vocalist’s cleans comes close to sounding like Greg Puciato (The Dillinger Escape Plan) in his poppier moments, especially apparent on “Epitaph”. Violin and piano occasionally pops up (and even harmonica and an accordion if I am hearing it right), as can be heard in “Oblivion”, a slow moving number faintly reminiscent of Alice In Chains that collapses in its last third into a dirgy Marylin Manson refrain before breaking down completely to a piano playing the song out.
The Grotesque is a puzzling album and it is rare that something gives me this much pause in comprehending the band’s vision. The building blocks at times feel like trying to fit a square peg through a triangle hole as the jazzy and classical instrumentation hovers alongside the grinding industrial/alternative metal. As intriguing as the mix ends up being, I rarely feel like it comes together as it could. There is no blueprint for this as far as I know and reaching out to create an expression this odd cannot be easy. Sitting at an hour also does not help the flow of the album as there is a lot of repetitive and slow moving material on it. As fascinatingly puzzling as this music is, and despite the obvious talent involved from musicians that have previously been in Type O Negative and Exodus, it is hard to recommend this to anyone but the most curious of listeners. Die Humane sound like they could put out a killer album if they manage to consolidate the disparate elements of their music into a coherent style. But to my ears, this is not it.
