According
to their Facebook page, the band name refers to an immunity to humans,
which sounds like the best immunity ever, since humans are just about
the most destructive and dangerous force the Earth has ever known. This
band’s brand of pummeling, hardcore noise is a very close second.
Hummune
was seemingly constructed in 2009 by sinister robots in some
Southampton, UK factory with the intention of beating human brains to a
gelatinous pulp. I haven’t been able to locate surnames for the three
lethal members of this band, furthering my suspicion that they are not
human at all, but Terminator-style machines that just happen to have
been programmed to rock hard enough to splinter teeth. Crafted in Darkness,
their full-length debut, pulses with Unsane’s jarring energy and drags
hardcore through sludge like the best work on Fudge Tunnel’s Hate Songs in E Minor.
Guitarist/vocalist Stu and bassist/vocalist Mike have rasps that finds
the broken glass-covered middle ground between Justin Broadrick’s
growliest moments in Godflesh and Lars Göran Petrov’s work in Entombed,
just drenched with reverb. The rhythm section (Rik on drums, Mike
mentioned previously) is phenomenal, digging deep trenches for mosh pit
victims while the guitar soars and stabs. These guys have the tools and
skill to do some serious damage.
Then
you listen to “Moth” and “Into Dust” to open the album and realize
you’re in for even more harm than you anticipated. These songs hit hard
but still contain a ton of texture, from splashes of shoegaze to the
whispered vocal delivery on “Claw.” Some of the gentler moments remind
me of early Deftones and work beautifully to enhance the foreboding mood
before the distortion levels every building in a kilometer radius. Not
every song hits with the same efficient fury (“Inside” features a
jarring rhythm that unfortunately murders the momentum, “Driven to Husk”
plods along without the demolishing riffs that made predecessor “Rise”
so deadly) but Crafted in Darkness
is still a damn good slab of noisy, metallic rock and hardcore. The
sneaky groove of “Era” closes out this album on a muscular note, ending
so ferociously that you almost forget the intricate songwriting and
melodic guitar work snaking around the bass rhythm just a few minutes
prior.
Listening to Crafted in Darkness
may not make you immune to the frustrations and dangers of dealing with
humanity, but for almost one hour you’ll feel like Hummune have
toughened you up to deal with all their shenanigans in stride. Either
that, or your brain will be gelatinous pulp. But hey, this is metal, you
can’t make an omelet without bruising some brains.
Check out Hummune on Spotify or over here at Bandcamp: http://hummune.bandcamp.com/album/crafted-in-darkness
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