THE HUMAN ABSTRACT’S MIDHEAVEN: PROOF THAT WE DON’T ALL ALWAYS AGREE HERE AT METALSUCKS

The inhabitants of the MetalSucks Mansion don’t agree on everything all the time. Case in point: Midheaven, the new album by The Human Abstract (out tomorrow on Hopeless Records). Axl Rosenberg loves it, Sammy O’Hagar, not so much. Since we’re all about intelligent debate here at MS, it seemed like the only logical thing to do was to allow both MetalSuckers their five minutes to express their views on the album.

So after the jump, check out not one, but two reviews of Midheaven, one positive, the other negative. Then go buy the damn thing so you can make up your own mind, and weigh in with your opinion in our comments section.

AXL ROSENBERG’S TAKE

The Human Abstract want to have their cake and eat it, too. They are, as Vince recently said to me, “a different kind of prog” – one that indulges in plenty of the musical masturbation prog dorks (myself included) love, but without ever sacrificing the pop hooks more commonly associated with their peers on this summer’s edition of the Warped Tour. There’s nary a fifteen minute instrumental meditation on the guitar player’s need to prove how big his dick is in sight on THA’s new album, Midheaven; but there is a lot of aural shape-shifting, schizophrenic time changes, and a general sense that the members of this band are better musicians than the members of most other bands.

In other words, The Human Abstract want to have their cake and eat it, too. And by and large, they succeed.

At their best, the songs on Midheaven are epic and cinematic. Static and cavernous chants kick off album opener “A Violent Strike,” but they quickly give way to elements of groove metal, pop metal, and thrash, all in the timespan of one song. The guitars soar, then dive-bomb like eagles coming down for their prey for quick-burst shred-fests. The mood is somehow exciting and melancholic at the same time. The variety within the song only hints at the variation that is to come over the course of the entire album; “Breathing Life into Devices” features a M.C. Escher sketch of a mathcore riff over strained Mike Patton-style yelps, and seconds later, it’s a soft, piano-driven ballad, and then a feel-good 90’s alt-rock song (it also ends with this awesome guitar solo). You’d think “This World is a Tomb” would be the band’s stab at straight-up death metal, but it’s actually a prom song waiting to happen, with gentle, rolling drums, and a distant, heavily distorted guitar as the backdrop. It’s a credit to the band that all these musical earthquakes transition so smoothly; this is the kind of album you wanna listen to a few times in a row just so you can try and figure out where all the song changes are, and better understand how those stylistic shifts were executed. It’s an endeavor that could keep you busy for a long while.

And I’ve only just covered three of the first four songs on the album. Sheesh.

Each and every member of the group kills it on this album; the line-up changes since their last album, Nocturne, have served the band very, very well (new guitarist Andrew Tapley is especially impressive). But their secret weapon might be vocalist Nathan Ells; not only does he, like his bandmates, indulge in a series of different metallic subgenres, and not only does he, like his bandmates, pull it off every time, but he often makes unusual choices as to which vocal style he’s going to utilize on the each section of each song. It keeps the listener on his or her toes and helps allow THA to stand out from the prog pack.

Midheaven isn’t perfect, mind you; like most prog albums, it walks, and sometimes crosses, the very fine line between intelligent and pretentious (there are a few spoken-word passages I could live without). But it is, easily, one of the best albums I’ve heard all summer, a fantastic blast of fresh air to clear away the August doldrums. And, oh yeah, it’s only THA’s second full-length album. I can’t wait to see what they do for a third.

(four out of five horns)

-AR

SAMMY O’HAGAR’S TAKE

The cover art says it all: ye who do not enjoy prog-metal need not enter. It’s almost as if The Human Abstract entered their album into a cover art generator: intentionally obtuse sort-of art that probably has a meaning but tries very hard to obscure it. All prog, whether rock or metal, relies heavily on this aesthetic in order to produce artwork for their records. So this makes Midheaven, The Human Abstract’s latest offering, really no different visually (granted, the most shallow thing by which you can judge an album). Its contents, unlike many of those prog records with terrible covers, doesn’t offer much more in the way of worthwhile surprises, deeply affecting music, or anything insightful to anyone not solely interested in virtuoso guitar noodling. But to those of you that enjoy the latter, hey, there’s a shitload of that.

In the interest of full disclosure, this particular reviewer doesn’t have a finely tuned taste for most prog-metal. Though you’d have to be both deaf and the holder of a single-digit IQ to not at least admire the musicianship, simply playing guitar really fucking fast does not result in good songs. And nor does utilizing an array of odd and shifting time signatures do more than prove you can play something in 7/4. A show of virtuosity or a deep knowledge of unconventional rhythm can be pulled off convincingly in its purest form (Steve Vai and Joe Satriani for the former, Mesghuggah’s Chaosphere repping the latter), but injecting it with fragile attempts at emotion or hackneyed attempts at a concept, prog-metal, for me, goes cold. It’s not so much that I have a problem with feelings in music, per se; it’s just that most of those in the prog-o-sphere have a very flat, dry, and simply inaccurate depiction of what those feelings are. And The Human Abstract’s problem lies in the fact that they’re trying to make deep music to be taken seriously, when truth be told, that’s damn near impossible to do when dealing with anything this excessively cold, calculated, and monstrously overwrought. The whole album comes off as a bunch of guys whose entire knowledge of the human race is taken from dystopian fiction and instructional shred videos.

Midheaven reeks of ridiculous self-importance, made evident by its pasty white guys trying to sing soulfully, lack of interesting pop hooks in their clean (read: weak) parts and, most fucking confusingly, random flourishes of Dillinger Escape Plan-style tech metal that subside to a boring acoustic passages. And the band do so much work to get their conceptual point across that the messages and effectiveness of rock’s most worthwhile concept albums is lost in a haze of forceful and overly blunt attempts to get the Midheaven’s themes and story across. Though it can be argued that what The Human Abstract are doing is an acquired taste, I find it hard to believe it’s a taste many would want to acquire. Their music is flaccid, lifeless, and seemingly composed to repel those who don’t have Operation Mindcrime memorized. But hey, did you hear those drums? Those 13/8 fills are crazy. If that and endless shredding are all you’re looking for in a metal record, then hey, Midheaven is a work of jean-creaming brilliance.

(1 ½ out of 5 horns)

-SO