The Life I Remember

Picture The Agonist, only slightly (key word) better. That's basically what Once Human are. The Life I Remember isn't brilliant enough to stand out particularly from other members of the modern melodeath scene, but it still sits on the better side of mediocrity and provides the listener with some entertainment.

We'll start with Lauren Hart, the vocalist. She tries incredibly hard to establish herself and showcase her abilities, but that in itself is the main issue I have with her. Everything just seems so far from natural; the rest of the cast aren't the greatest actors of all-time, but she's the worst offender. She seems determined to channel Angela Gossow in her performance (down to the layers in her growls), making it appear like she isn't being genuine with us. She does cleans as well though, which actually are quite redeeming. While Lauren still doesn't establish herself as massively unique her cleans are actually rather soothing and she's pleasant to listen to. Honestly the band should consider working them into the material more often in future, because it's a bit of a tragedy that such mediocre harsh vocals get far longer in the limelight.

The riffing is fairly basic and uninspired for the most part, often borrowing from metalcore with chugs all over the place. Sometimes it even borders on djent (most noticeably on 'Pick Your Poison'), although it usually doesn't get this extreme. The one thing I can say is that there's a semi-tangible groove to them most of the time which makes them at least a little fun to listen to. That being said, why do the moments of inspiration take so long to come around? It's supposed to be melodeath, where the melody is what separates success from failure. Well, there's a serious lack of melody going on here, folks. It's just bludgeoning riff after riff after riff for three minutes until we get a thirty second solo before we end how we started. The drumming sticks with the same approach no matter what's going on, and the only interesting part which comes in the form of brief orchestral passages are used painfully sparingly when they have so much potential to spice up this bland product.

And then there's the lyrics. Dear god, what a bunch of edgelords. These are the kind of lyrics I'd expect from either an angsty teen who's acting hard or maybe at a push a band who have only a very basic grasp of English. Normally this kind of thing can be glossed over, but this makes me cringe too much to ignore. Here's but a brief extract from the appropriately titled 'You Cunt':

"Don't fuck with me
I'll break your bones
you cunt
so you can stay down and burn"

Will ye, aye? Square go.

Overall I'd say this album was pretty standard for melodeath/metalcore; not wholly original and pretty uninspired for seventy-five per cent of the record, even if it's not bad just for background noise. However, following this album with Allegaeon's new Proponent for Sentience highlights the kind of quality that Once Human have to compete with on the melodeath market, and nobody in their right mind would pick The Life I Remember in that scenario.