Once Human: Overcoming Vulnerability

It’s been a minute since we’ve heard from Los Angeles’ melodic death metal outfit ONCE HUMAN. Since arriving on the scene in 2014 and making their initial impact with debut full-length release The Life I Remember they’ve continued to impress and have become a really exciting prospect as the years have progressed. Their previous release Evolution dropped in 2017 and really helped catapult them into the spotlight with its high levels of energy and powerful intensity. When provided with this fact frontwoman Lauren Hart was particularly surprised with just how much time has elapsed.

“Wow, has it really been five years? It doesn’t feel like that at all. I guess the last few years have been a bit of a pause button so they don’t count!” They haven’t been sitting on their backsides taking it easy however, the pandemic gave them a lot of time to work on the long awaited follow-up. “I found the process quite difficult because I generally work best under deadlines and under pressure but because with limited time I have less opportunities to second guess myself and tweak things,” Lauren says. “The album release kept getting pushed back so I was able to keep rewriting things so more time can be quite terrible for a perfectionist! I’m confident that a lot of good came out of those changes though, it did make a lot of things better. Everything is real and true to what was happening in the moment and what I was feeling at the time and I feel a lot of people will find it more relatable because of that.”

Whilst the last couple of years have not been an ideal time to be a musician, with the most significant part of many a bands income in touring and live performances coming to a grinding halt, ONCE HUMAN have persevered and knuckled down to work on their third full-length release entitled Scar Weaver which is due for release in February and is poised to set 2022 alight, showing significant progression and a bit of a stylistic shift for ONCE HUMAN as they continue to hone in on their sound and identity going forward. The introduction of guitarist Max Karon into the fold has yielded significant benefits, lightening the load and lifting some of the burden off the shoulders of guitarist Logan Mader. “I think we’ve definitely come a lot closer to defining our real sound between the first album and now. Evolution was great and I still stand by it, the title was quite appropriate as since then we’ve changed a lot. Our guitarist Max has taken up quite a lot of the writing duties and he’s really been responsible for the change in our sound and what we have done with Scar Weaver.”

As well as the levelling up of their songwriting abilities Lauren has really challenged herself with regards to the variation in her vocal output, escaping from her comfort zone and pushing her capabilities to even more impressive levels. “I think people will notice the change in my vocal styles. I feel like a completely different person. Being able to tour with KAMELOT really showed me what I am capable of and Max‘s music has really pushed me to my limits so I’m really thankful for that,” admits Lauren. “When we first got started with ONCE HUMAN I really didn’t want to do clean vocals at all as I just felt quite uncomfortable with them.”

Being able to perform vocals on an album and then taking those tracks out on the road and being able to perform them in a live setting night after night in front of a crowd is a completely different ball game and this is a particular aspect where Lauren has progressed in leaps and bounds. “It’s quite a contrast to screaming as you can be nervous, go out there and within the first couple of words you slot into the groove but with clean vocals it’s a lot more personal and confronting, it can make you feel very vulnerable but I’m growing on confidence and becoming more comfortable with it. I wanted to use more styles and have that paint brush in my tool belt. Some new colours to play with! It took a bit of time to get everything settled in a live environment as my screams are naturally very loud in volume and my cleans were quite quiet and subdued and it was quite difficult for a sound guy to chop and change between the styles. The breathing techniques are also quite challenging as they require a lot of control and use of your diaphragm and I’ve managed to find a way of seamlessly switching between them both.”

Scar Weaver opened up the opportunity to work with the illustrious Robb Flynn, a man who Logan has a long standing relationship with from his many years of contributing to MACHINE HEAD. His guest appearance on the previously released single Deadlock was one of Lauren‘s highlights of the entire album process. “I feel so lucky to have been able to work with Robb. I didn’t know it was happening and didn’t expect it, at the time he’d never really done guest features. He came back with this amazing chorus which was way better than the one I wrote and we were blown away by how the song turned out. It became one of our favourites on the album. Having him in the music video was also another highlight, having him perform it with us in San Francisco was incredible.”

ONCE HUMAN have been one of the fortunate bands to get back out on the road again and be able to give the lucky attendees a taste of their new material on their support slot to CRADLE OF FILTH back in October 2021. Whilst there are still restrictions to be taken into account, Lauren was relieved to be able to experience some level of normality, however brief it may have been. “Being able to tour again was a great feeling but it was also very different as I love being able to interact and talk with the fans and we weren’t able to do that and I have a feeling it’s going to be like that for a long time. We have plans in place for early 2022 but whether they manage to take place, get postponed or are cancelled altogether is anyone’s guess. We just have to hope for the best and I’m sure most people are doing the exact same at this point.”

Scar Weaver is out now via earMusic. 

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