Chaos Divine (The Human Connection)

I wanted to share these guys with everyone here, cos this album is arguably some of the best metal released in the past 10 years. It's prog-metal that's got it's roots in melodic death metal, but utilizes mostly soaring clean vocals with some lightly used harsh vocals (the singer's voice vaguely reminds me of Mikael Akerfeldt every now and again, but he's got his own timbre for sure). A lot of the rhythms on this album are timed very oddly, but are very syncopated and fairly easy to get into on a visceral level. There's lots of headbanging caused by perfectly released tension within the songs here. The song structures are pretty original, too, making this an album worth revisiting very often.

Sadly, none of their other material really stacks up to the lightning in a bottle of The Human Connection, but they really knocked this album out of the park. Their latest album was very disappointing to me, cos it scaled back a lot of the things that made The Human Connection so damn interesting, focusing more on catchy, immediate melodies. [That's not to say The Human Connection doesn't have straight-up sing-along worthy material, it's just that it's usually within the context of a more ambitious track from an instrumental aspect.]

Here's some of my favorite tracks:



In this one, take note of the release of tension following the lines:
"And young child, don’t walk away from your dreams
And young child, it’s not as bad as it seems
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but only you can hurt you"

The Human Connection is a killer album and I have to agree that 'Avalon' & 'Colliding Skies' didn't do much for me at all. It's been a long while since I even thought about this album much less jammed it. I'll have to put it on my iPod.

I've known about it for a few years now, and I seem to get in cycles where I forget about it and then revisit it and get blown away all over again. I didn't think it was mindblowing or anything the first 10 or so times I'd jammed it, but as I kept coming back to it, it just kept revealing layers to me that I didn't notice the first time around. It's intensely emotional and introspective music, with so much passion and inspired instrumentation and technical finesse that it's almost impossible for me to not love it.

I love music like that that can just consistently hit you hard, but in different ways over time.

Well said. The fact that it's really introspective is what made me really like it. As much as I like introspective lyrics it's the paring of complementary music that's equally introspective that really get me. I feel the same way about TesseracT and will easily listen to the instrumental versions of their albums over the versions with vocals because it just speaks to me in a deeper way. I used to thing I suffered from depression but now I realize I have so many walls on my heart and mind that when I feel "depressed" it's just my mind trying to give my heart some insight.

akeldama wrote:

Well said. The fact that it's really introspective is what made me really like it. As much as I like introspective lyrics it's the paring of complementary music that's equally introspective that really get me. I feel the same way about TesseracT and will easily listen to the instrumental versions of their albums over the versions with vocals because it just speaks to me in a deeper way. I used to thing I suffered from depression but now I realize I have so many walls on my heart and mind that when I feel "depressed" it's just my mind trying to give my heart some insight.

I love TesseracT too, but as you said, not in the same way I love The Human Connection. TesseracT's lyrics are secondary to the enjoyment I get from the way the music is crafted. Chaos Divine's lyrics on that album speak so clearly to me on an existential level, and the music delivers a great punch alongside the messages it feels so cathartic to hear; musings about the alternating beauty/futility of life, the notion of something beyond us that we are intrinsically connected to, the feelings of losing autonomy, etc. The kinds of things that I'm very glad others feel and express, if only to give me something to connect to on more than just an aesthetic level.

I remember trying, really trying, to get into Colliding Skies when it was fresh. And while I liked what I heard, I didn't feel anything about it. At all, and giving it some time didn't help. So I gave up on it eventually. Which is a shame since I should enjoy this kind of sound, plus they are Australian so that makes them above average by default. Let's see how this one goes.

This one's so much better than Colliding Skies (which I tried to dig, but just couldn't). That one feels like they were trying to find some sort of commercial viability for themselves, which isn't the best route to take in the prog-metal scene. Especially after such an inspired album. They even recorded a cover of Africa by Toto as a cheap way to get exposure, and it apparently worked, seeing as it's their most popular track on Spotify.

I misread the thread title as "The Human Centipede" for a nanosecond.