Creating Human Cometh

Human Cometh is a band with no real home other than cyberspace. They are part of something that is becoming very frequent in the world of music: online collaboration.

For quite some time now record companies have been reuniting bands and recording new music without the band members even shaking hands. Someone writes some music, sends it to the members; they record their individual pieces and send it back to be mixed. From my limited knowledge of recording procedure this sort of thing has gone on for quite some time.

Now that procedure has been taken to a whole new level with online collaboration websites that allow musicians to meet, socialize, and ultimately record music as a “band.” I’m not entirely sure about Human Cometh, but a lot of these bands have never met face to face. Does this seem wrong to anyone else? Seriously, I’m asking!

I have done interviews myself with bands in the past that told me they had no tours booked because they have never really met and since they live all over the world it would be a nightmare to organize.

More after the warp:

What happened to friends getting together in their garage for the common cause of music? What happened to going into the studio and jamming it out until it sounds right? I can’t imagine collaborating with my Facebook friends. I don’t even know half of their real names. Does the music recorded in this method still have soul? How do you decide the masters? Via, Skype or email? I’m old!

Kaj Roth (vocals and coincidentally a writer for melodic.net), Morgan Pettersson (guitar), Bjor Pherson (bass), Jon Robbins (drums), and Jay Shankuon (keyboards) formed Human Cometh and have recorded the 2010 Evolution and the current HCII.

HCII is a great album and falls more to the melodic side than the progressive the band talks about. You can find details at www.humancometh.com. Tracks like “Alone in the Dark,” “Red Balloon,” and my personal favorite “Smash Crash” are good hard rockin’ tracks, but I always found myself looking to trip up the production values because of the recording format. I certainly didn’t find much. The album is seamless and the mix is fabulous. You would swear the guys were jamming in the same room with that feeling of aggressiveness and being a unit that comes with good musicians and good material. So, if I couldn’t pick it out, why does it bother me so much? I have bitched about over production in the past, so does taking bass lines, drums, guitars, and vocals that are thousands of miles apart and mixing them to a solid piece of work make it over production?

Although musicians do record and mix separately I had a hard time embracing it because it was done over so many miles and so many electronics. Shit, I am old!

I kept coming back to the question: even if it’s good, is the soul still there?

For me, I can’t get past the internet scope on recording and the social media aspect of it, but if you accept change better than my dinosaur self than check out Human Cometh. You’ll be happy you did.

I obviously have more questions than answers so go download Human Cometh and let me die with my analogue technology.

Show me your horns,

Martell

Tags: album review, Evolution, HCII, heavy metal blogs, Human Cometh, Kaj Roth