We Are But Human

I'm starting to find a lot of melodeath bands featuring predominantly female clean vocals, the latest of which being Gone in April. The main difference about this one is that the cleans are mostly operatic, and I can't decide if that's for better or for worse. I don't think that the operatic style really fits with the rest of the band, but whenever the singer reverts to a more standard kind of clean her voice is really quite poor. Just listen to 'One More Day'. It barely sounds like she's singing, and she sounds like she's having difficulties with breathing. It just ruins the whole song really, because it's impossible to focus on the music with that going on. Having said that, I guess those kind of moments make you appreciate that the rest of her vocal work is pretty good, if not the best I've heard.

The rest of the band are pretty solid, although like the vocals it's not the greatest thing I've heard. The drumming mostly revolves around blast beats but it's pretty technical stuff. The pattern on 'Destroy to Build' sounds particularly complex, and even if the rest of the kit isn't used to anywhere near the same level it's still pretty impressive. The drummer also engineered the entire album, and he did a good job on it too. The only issue that I have with the production is that the guitars are slightly obscured by the drumming and the vocals, but it's nothing too extreme. I'd also have liked to have heard more of the violin.

Speaking of the guitar, it's a bit hit and miss. Whenever it comes to solos it's very clear that the guy has a lot of talent, but equally there are moments where it barely sounds like he's contributing at all. A lot of his work relies on fairly repetitive riffing, and it has an ill effect on the entire band. Whenever he's throwing hooks around the music comes to life, but without doing that everything else seems a little tired. It'd have been nice to hear more songs like 'Silence Answers Me', where the guitarist actually leads the band forward in several sections rather than relying on the vocalist to do so.

Like I said earlier, it would have been nice to hear more of the violin. It's buried really deeply behind everything else (although not to the extent of the bass), and when it comes in it usually sounds more like a very subtle touch of synth than anything else. If it was further forward in the mix then Gone in April could have done something really interesting with it, and maybe We Are but Human would appeal to me more as a result. Sadly this isn't the case, but maybe when it comes to their next release that will change. The one song that really does utilise it to full extent is 'Sancta Terra', and it does prove to be more interesting than most of the other songs on the album.

The album length is a bit of an issue. It's an hour long, and while nothing is ridiculously boring here, there isn't much that warrants the listener sticking around for the full thing. It's more likely that you'll give up halfway through and then come back to it on another day, which isn't really what you want from an album. There isn't really that much of a change in dynamic or pace across any of the thirteen songs, and the intro and not-quite-instrumental don't really change anything either.

We Are but Human is not a bad album by any means, but it isn't exciting enough to really grab me and make me want to listen to it over and over again. It has a few interesting ideas, but ultimately it doesn't pull them off and we're left wondering if the followup will be any better.