ONLY HUMAN To Release New Record At The End Of The Week

Off the back of a release of a single that goes by the name of “Techno Fascist,” the UK beacons of dark rock Only Human are gearing up to release their forthcoming record, Planned Obsolescence, at the end of this week (March 27th). The debut album is a warning of society’s pending collapse amidst a pummelling fusion of prog, djent, metal, and electronica.

Already picking up 9/10 reviews from zines like Metal Temple, the progressive record almost doesn’t seem that progressive or that dystopian when looking at our current socio-political landscape worldwide. Their most recent single, “Techno Fascist,” is eerily appropriate, as Only Human detail that the song is “a confrontation with the privatized technocratic establishments of today. The song questions the acceptance of disruptive technology as an inevitability while also asserting that we all have a choice in whether we want to risk losing our humanity to a soulless system that guides our every move.”

Lead singer Patrick Grønbæch Christensen says to New Noise Magazine that he’s a software developer and he works “with a lot of computer stuff; I surround myself with technology all the time. I constantly follow all these different forums and stay very in tune, and I got sick of some parts of where the technology is heading. (That downward spiral) felt like it was a niche thing when we were first writing these songs; now it feels like it’s become more obvious to people where we (are headed), and all that makes me angrier.

“You can guess how we feel based off the song ‘Techno Fascist’ (laughs). I keep asking myself, ‘Why is everything so stupid all of a sudden?’ It feels like, and maybe that could just be biased because of how I grew up. If things used to make sense, now they don’t because things are just crazy all the time. Every day, there’s just new crazy going on. You can just give into that kind of overwhelming sense of despair and the absurd, but I also wanted the record to open up, for it to feel like there’s something more here. You can power through it at the end of the day and get to the other side.” 

The Danish unit behind the concept record are vocalist and guitarist Patrick Grønbæch Christensen, bassist Guillaume Blanjean, guitarists Martin Hastrup and JaCK Kigne, and drummer Andreas Pröll; and are well-equipped to discuss the matters at hand with a technical background at the helm, Only Human saying to another source: “The album is supposed to wake people up to all the ways technocracy is encroaching on society. Tech companies often design their products to have an expiration date, so that we’re forced to replace them with the newest model. Through our social media and the adoption of influencer culture, we now live in a reality where humans are products to be consumed and disposed of.”

You can pre-order Planned Obsolescence here.