Humanfly
To those in the know, Humanfly are a band that have emerged quite fittingly from the chrysalis of a super-fast, screaming, riff-fest, into the fully developed, crushingly progged-out beast of doom they are now. But to those even more in the know, in a way this is the sound of a band coming full circle - “When we first started doing Humanfly, the stuff that we first started knocking out before we even recorded was pretty much not too dissimilar to what we do now in that it wasn’t very vocal and there was a lot of spacey stuff going on”, singer/guitarist John explains, and in what turned out to be a rare interjection, brother Andy takes over, “It was just what we were listening to at the time”. “I think we just got this obsession after while of wanting to kick dick in with a bit of pace!” continues John.
This summary is true enough. Their first record, ‘A God Among Insects’, certainly does ‘kick dick in’ and the follow-up, simply titled ‘II’ (there were suggestions that is was to be called ‘Led Zeppelin IV’), continues that tradition albeit in a more considered way - “It wasn’t a conscious decision... I think we found something that was more enjoyable to play in the long-term because, when you’re in a band, you play those songs for a long time. Whereas with those faster songs, it’s fun to knock them out once in a while, but if we were still seriously doing that it would probably annoy me”.
More importantly, what the band produced with ‘II’ was a better record. Not that there’s anything wrong with their debut, but ‘II’ has so much more to sink your teeth into. It also turns out that their grassroots, DIY attitude gave them a luxury that most bands don’t have - “Being able to record with a mate (Ben Gardner) and get something out of it which you’re happy with is really beneficial because in a studio environment you’ve got your deadline and everything you have to do has to be perfect on the day - that’s it, you can’t go back and alter it. With ‘II’ we could do stuff afterwards. Having absolute control over where you record, how you want everything to sound, especially if you get really, really geeky about all the aspects of the recording... I mean the vocals for ‘II’ we recorded in our bathroom upstairs just because I like the sound in there and Andy did some overdubs in our front room and stuff”. Apparently, there are some out-takes somewhere of him accidentally trashing the Sutcliffe lounge mid-solo. No really...
Despite all the ‘duuuude’ heavy metal rhetoric, audacious nods towards 70s-style space-rock, and tales of trashing quiet suburban homes with the lost art of the guitar solo... there’s still room for politics in world of the ‘Fly. Yeah, that doesn’t really sound right does it? But there is - read the lyrics. “It’s a bit of a tribute to the past, in that even though I’m not really into generic hardcore, I’ve kind of come from that background from years of getting involved in that kind of scene and still believe that it’s relevant.” says John “And I think that, especially in metal, and doom, and other stuff these days, no-one really sings about anything that I care about, and other than musically I’m not really bothered about them. We’re not really known as this political band... but I like the fact that it’s a subtlety and it’s in there. One reason is to retain the belief in a certain viewpoint, where I see that being a dying thing in ‘the music scene’, if you like”.
So, while we’re on the subject of lyrics, why are there so few? “If you throw loads of words in, sometimes you’re just doing it for the sake of it. Either because that’s the way you’re used to music sounding or because that’s what usually works, but if you really hit the sort of message you want to convey, if you’ve got a message at all, you get more impact with the fact that less is more”.
Maybe so, but paradoxically, musically speaking at least, Humanfly have proved that more is more. And more power to ‘em.