HUMAN IMPACT – Gone Dark

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8.0

• Bands:
  HUMAN IMPACT
• Duration: 00:44:30
• Available from: 04/10/2024
• Label:

• Ipecac Recordings

Streaming not yet available

Four years ago, reviewing the self-titled debut, we hoped that Human Impact were not just something extemporaneous, but a real band that could add other chapters to that dazzling debut: our wish has been granted and we find ourselves in our hands second outing of the New Yorkers.
The line-up has changed, with the two founders Chris Spencer (Unsane) and Jim Coleman (Cop Shoot Cop) joined by a brand new rhythm section, composed of bassist Eric Cooper (Made Out Of Babies, Bad Power) and drummer Jon Syverson (Daughters), but the desire to throw the sad reality we face every day in our faces has remained intact. “QThis is a statement about how things are going in the world right now“, said Spencer himself, “The situation just now was pretty bad. Now it's even worse“.
To tell us these stories of resilience and endurance, Americans use the musical language that belongs to them and which, obviously, draws from the noise rock of which all these musicians are veterans, filtered through an original and courageous interpretation: the sound is not so abrasive as one might have expected, heaviness is sometimes implied and there are many probably unexpected subtleties present; yet, upon careful analysis, there is no shortage of ideas that lead us in the direction of Unsane or Cop Shoot Cop, with a veil of the theatricality of Swans and the gloom of Godflesh.
Only, these ingredients are each present in small quantities, without aiming for bombastic solutions but instead trying to reach the ears of the listener with a message that unfolds on multiple layers. The resulting mixture is devastating, the fresco of a human being who has lost all points of reference, in a society that is now inhospitable and totally insensitive.
“Hold On” is an invitation to fight, not to give up despite everything, shouted with an unmistakable post-hardcore spirit and which we find even more rocky in the slogans of “Destroy To Rebuild”; Spencer's electronics takes on industrial connotations in “Imperative”, while in “Collapse” it is a fog that envelops a gray and resigned world and in “Corrupted” you have the sensation of seeing a police siren appear at any moment . The short “Lost All Trust” finally closes the circle with a declaration of surrender.
Coleman and Spencer experienced first-hand the New York of the 80s, the one before Rudolph Giuliani's 'zero tolerance', a city made of poisons and dangers, that memory is still vivid in their minds and right from there comes the exhortation they want to send us: humanity is in disarray, we are a single conglomerate that barely survives in this inhospitable environment and the only way to get out of it is to unite and fight, without each thinking of their own gain.