Ordaining the Apocalypse

If the term chaoscore isn’t reserved for any other band yet, I would like to be the first to slap it on this band, Humanity Falls. They hail from New York City and seem to represent the multicultiness of that city, having members all from different ethnical backgrounds. Despite that they’re probably just all 'New Yorkers’, that could be a good starting point, as each can bring his own to the table.

But, if that was ever the case with Humanity Falls, they failed to put it all together to create a coherent whole. The nine songs that are on their debut record Ordaining the Apocalypse all feel like their constituent ingredients were thrown on a big fuckin’ heap without giving them further consideration. Which is a pity, as the constituent parts each have their quality.

The fact that this album was always going to be eargrindingly noisy was a given from the beginning. Each of the band’s members brings something to the total that even a rabid ogre couldn’t call sophisticated. The drums are a collection of fast-as-fuck fills, the guitar work is a chaotic mash of squeals, screams and grainy riffs and the vocals are pretty fuckin’ brutal. I’m having troubles singling out the bass, so that means it’s probably mostly doing what the guitars are doing.

And all of this is fine. The band’s operating in the grindcore / ‘experimental death metal’ genre. Noise is what you expect. It’s what you want, when you’re looking into this genre. However, I do think it could’ve been more ‘put together’. Often drum fills and guitar riffs do not support each other at all, there’s no thought through interplay between instruments, and the vocals almost feel random. Perhaps it’s all on purpose, but it still feels as if the group set out in their rehearsal basement playing randomly at the same tempo.

That’s not to say there aren’t any parts that make sense. There are moments in which you do get a vague idea of this band’s potential. But these are very very scarce. Try to figure out what’s going on. Try to make any sense of it. Likely you’ll end up pretty baffled.

The conclusion then is as you’d expect it. There’s definitely some talent and strength available in this band, but they haven’t managed to combine it into something more than what is the minimal result you get when you combine the input of four musicians: noise. Instead of working on getting even more blastgasms, crazy riffology and freaky shit in general, these guys should take a moment to pause and think about their compositions first. How can we put order in our chaos, such that it may still seem like chaos, but the trained listener will hear something deeper. It seems, from a new song they’ve uploaded on their Bandcamp, called Profanation of the Innocuous, that they’ve not yet set foot in this direction.

That said, the band is offering their album up for free download. As we say in ze Nezzerlands: don’t look a given horse in the mouth!
____________________
Note: This review was originally published by me at my blog www.deathmetalbaboon.com