THE HUMAN CONDITION (Modern Maze) CD-R
Since quite a few years England has been incubating new Doom bands with a regularity that is both amazing and terrifying. You can sometimes just wonder where all these people are coming from and where have they been years ago? In the case of The Human Condition the answer is rather easy and leads to a bit of namedropping. Most prominent might be bandleader Jonathon Gibbs for his time in both Unsilence and The River, two heavyweights when it comes to English Doom. Surprisingly the man does not play the drums in The Human Condition though but is one of two guitarists responsible for the thick sound of The Human Condition. The other one is his old Unsilence band mate Kieron Tuohey. But there is another man in the band whose previous work I really dig. That is bassist James Moffatt, who was part of the wonderful but now defunct Misericorde.
The Human Condition have, like I said, a damn thick, down-tuned Doom sound that reminds a bit of more sludgy working bands in England and elsewhere. The riffs again in contrast have hints of bands like Revelation or Epic Doom bands. Therefore a closeness to the protagonists other bands is given here, especially to The River at times. So they do not totally leave the path they are known for but that is okay. The three songs on this demo are really good doom songs with cool, well arranged riffs.
'Modern Maze' has some nice progressive hints, 'The Gifts I Gave' is good material for serious doom-nodding as well as head banging when they start to play some up-tempo riffing. And once you get used to the banging the band slows down again to make it heavy as hell. 'Pretending' reminds me of Dennis-Cornelius-era Revelation. There is a deep sadness in this song that gets emphasized by singer Nathan Harrison’s vocals very well. He has a big stake in the bands slight epic sound, and he has this certain epicness in his voice, that has a strong mid-ranged timbre that sounds very well over those doomy riffs. The Human Condition will be a force to be reckoned with when it comes to sad, epic sounding Doom Metal. This should be a good reason for you to purchase their first demo.
(Thorsten Frahling)