Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Human Factor- Let Nature take it’s Course (RIAG Records R104)


Human Factor is a mostly instrumental four piece band for Russia. Longyear starts things off with a sort of post rock vibe with a main repeated melodic guitar line, which morphs into the lead as the bass and drums keep the pace in the middle. The keyboards sort of float around the sound but later takes the lead in complimenting the guitar lines nicely and there is some singing as well. A 3mins the track becomes much heavier and intense. ALF is a super cool track with some freaky sampled voices and cool Ozric like synths and some intense parts. Very cool song. 1816 has a sort of new age like keyboard that I don’t like much but the bass and drums are killer on this track and later a more intense guitar part kicks in. Later there is some excellent synth playing as the new age stuff is dropped. Lake of Solitude slows things down a bit with floating spacey vibe to it. There is a nice interplay between the guitar (who rarely solos) and synth, which is the lead solo instrument in this band. Some similar synths and arppegiated synths appear in this track as others. Nice e-bow guitar work at the end of the track. Touch of Chixculub is probably the track with heaviest guitar on the record. All the tracks so far are mid paced.  Huge melodic thread runs thorough this one which counters the heavy guitar riff. A bit of piano on this one. Alarm #1202 starts with some layers of synths before the bass and drums kick in and it slowly grows. This track features some more interesting guitar, one delay and one played quite fast, an almost like acoustic but not quite (or is the synth?). The end is really hard rocking. Red Shift brings things down a bit with some samples and keyboards before the band joins in. Again, the synths are the main solo instrument. Nuba Vetera Promesas Pluvon features David Paulley on voice and closes out this album and features some piano once again.

This band just has an excellent vibe and good contrasts between dark and light moods, heavy and less heavy without letting it get too commercial in sound.  Quite an enjoyable and excellent album.


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