The other week I was pondering the ever-increasing length of the EP, and wondering if six tracks didn't in fact constitute a mini-album. Then I received This Human Disease's debut release, which contains three tracks, which apparently also constitutes an EP. Back in the days of 12" singles, that would have been a, er, single, with an A side and 2 B-sides (i.e. an additional B-side not on the 7"). These are confusing times. So, the release is called 'Dead Before Dawn,' but there's no track of that title on it.
Moving on... is it any good? Well, it's all a matter of opinion, I suppose. We've done nu-metal. I thought it had died a death, finally, after lasting far longer than anyone might have anticipated. But now we've got the second wave of nu-metal, the nu-metal revival, which presumably has come about as the result of kids discovering their older siblings' nu-metal collection, or, perish the thought, their parents' nu-metal stash. Enter This Human Disease, inspired by '90's metal heavyweights Coal Chamber and Fear Factory, through to the likes of Pantera, Slipknot and Rage Against the Machine' (huh? RART?).
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Listen, Slipknot were gash, and I'm still convinced that the reason they wore the masks and boiler suits was because the 'band' were a rotating cast of besuited, clean-cut record company execs by day moonlighting as 'scary' metal muthas by night in a project that started as a ruse / prank / bet to see if they could sell manufactured angst to the 'kidz' if they packaged it right. And it bloody worked!
So, in brief, 'Dead Before Dawn' features three tracks of throaty, if rather lumpen nu-metal which features a bass drum that's way too tight and way too toppy, resulting in an irritating clicky sound that's rather like a sewing machine that runs at more or less the same tempo throughout. It sounds like a thousand other bands from about eight years ago. As such, This Human Diseased are entirely surplus to requirements.
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