nolongerhuman - Withdrawal

With over a decade of experience creating harsh electronic music, Clint Robertson AKA nolongerhuman has slowly been gaining a bigger and more loyal fanbase with his uncompromising melodies and deep, personal lyrics that are splattered onto the masses. This ten track monster spans nearly an hour, with top of the line dark electro spasms and insane numbers.

Stop.Listen.Think.Infest lets us behold his masterful skills in crafting riveting songs, and inputting powerful samples into an ear drawing introduction before getting into a thick club friendly track. But, as the label has described his work, this song will do well on the dance floor, but it will offer so much more than just another mindless catchy tune to stomp your feet to. And that single thought will remain true for each and every track on the album.

Apostate wrecks in next with a harder beat overall and louder, more in your face vocals. And, while the song does well without them, the moments where the slamming beats tone down to allow the samples to riddle their messages are perhaps some of the most powerful moments on the track.

With church bells ringing along with an emotional synth charging it, Raptor hits in next with a wonderful introduction. The bells continue and move with the main bulk of the song, as the synths make an edgy sound to go along with the harsh tone of it all. Fitting in with the intro, they sound like organs that went to electronic hell and came out more badass than ever.

Lusus Naturae gives out another good dark electro song; and if there is one thing by now that I noticed about this artist, it's that his synth placement is impeccable. Each line that I've heard throughout the past four songs have been set in an ideal location.

Modern Narcissus has a sort of epic feel to it, as if it belongs in a time of a forgotten age. The intro ambient ring to it with choral samples played with this feeling, and manages to hold true throughout the duration of the song. Once again, this is a well done track.

With a bit of an acoustic instrumentation beginning off the song, that is soon wiped away by the electronic beast that soon strives forth from the abyss in Sycophant.

With a decent martial industrial like beginning, complete with military like drums and a soft synth line to work its way through, Dead Empire once again sets up a wonderful mood. The song caught me just like the others, and drew me in like no other.

Slower moving and making each note count more than the faster moving tracks, The Forgotten slams home again to a positive reception. I love how the synths were able to follow his voice in the track at some points without a flaw to be found. Well done.

Coming close to the end, Quiet Desperation has a pretty creepy atmosphere in the beginning. Like a track where you'd see a haunted doll in a bloody, darkened room on an ominous Halloween evening, this song manages to spook you to no end.

And, with the last track coming in as The Death Hour, I suppose it's time to start saying our sweet farewells to what turned out to be a great album. Fast, aggressive, and more heavy than the rest of the tracks present, this one manages to go through a lot in it near seven minute length. What a hell of a way to go.

Now, when it comes to the dark electro scene, it's sometimes hard to find great and new tracks, as a lot of it comes out the same with garbled vocals and the same structure repeated time and time again. But, that's where nolongerhuman differs; each track brought out on this album, while not completely groundbreaking, manages to overcome a lot of the cliches that currently riddle the genre. Taking a bold step forward to cross the line into new territory, this man has come out with a brilliant album for mid 2014 with Withdrawal. I would not doubt if it appeared on a few album of the year lists later on down the line, but for now, I think it just landed on my list. Aug 01 2014