Malaysian Bolt Thrower worshippers Humiliation have returned with their follow up to last year’s debut ‘Dawn of Warfare’. As a worshipper at the altar of the Bolt myself, I found that album to be a revelation, especially in absence of new material by Bolt Thrower themselves, but it became clear that not only was it not an adequate replacement for genuine new material, but also with time the cracks became more and more apparent. Now a year down the line, Humiliation’s second album ‘Seek to Survive’ looks to build on a promising start, even if it was a little rough around the edges.
My first thought on pressing play was that at least they had the sense to have a traditional intro track that actually concentrates on the music this time, rather than the clichéd military bugle charge. This time, the transition into first actual track ‘Lost Contact’ is much smoother, and I feel like we are already making good progress. It was around this point then that I realised that progress was perhaps not as swift as I had hoped, as the determined downtuned riff that kicked in sounded largely all too familiar, due to it having been the same one that was used on a good 30% of the last album, and as it turns out, largely the same amount here also. I was expecting the band to sound a bit tighter this time around, but alas no. That’s not to say they are bad as they are all very good musicians, but this does have the sound of an album where the majority of the tracks were laid down over one or two takes and occasionally things sound very slightly sloppy and out of time. Whilst last time I found singer Bear-Bee to be an entertaining, if limited death vocalist, now he comes across as just limited. Every track is packed wall to wall with the same one tone incomprehensible grunt, which now just comes across as lazy.
Whilst there is no doubt or denial of their musical influences, Humiliation still come very close to outright plagiarism on a couple of occasions as riffs are, let’s put it kindly… borrowed from Bolt Thrower’s ‘Those Once Loyal’ album. ’With One Objective’s primary objective was to use the riff from ‘Anti-Tank (Dead Armour)’, whilst ‘Towards the Target’ uses an approximation of the intro to ‘At First Light’ as its own. See, now this sort of stuff only works if you are writing your own material chaps; otherwise it tends to defeat the object a bit. On the positive side of things; and there are positives here, Humiliation are showing signs of developing some song ideas of their own that are not entirely Bolt Thrower influenced, in the shape of ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ and ‘High Fliers’, an excellent track that is largely let down by a flat vocal. It’s also worth noting that ‘High Fliers’ and ‘Hellfire Pass’ come in the opposite order to which they are listed on the cover. That’s a bad miss…
‘Seek to Survive’ is not as bad as this review would make out. It has some very good songs, quality musicianship (in particular the stomping bassline), and it still fills a very specific gap in the metal market. It is however largely bereft of originality, the vocals and guitar riffs need a lot more variation to hold the interest, and perhaps a little more care could be taken over the arrangement of the guitar solos in particular, which can be somewhat clunky and disjointed. I was hoping that after a start with plenty of promise, Humiliation would have seized the opportunity and come up with a more polished and refined product with a few more of their own ideas. It’s quite a shame really. Both enjoyable and disappointing in equal measures, this one.
http://humiliation.my/online
Lee Kimber
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