16th May 2021

Exclusive Interview: Huminoid talk writing and recording!

This week has been something of a celebration of our Indonesian Metal brothers Huminoid as the Manado based Metallic Hardcore six piece landed their self titled sophomore EP on Planet Metal with a satisfying crunch. We’ve waxed lyrical about how they started life as a Death Metal outfit before getting rid of their initial recordings and starting over with inspirations from largely American bands like Orthodox, Sanction and Vein in the New Wave of Metallic Hardcore movement (Trademark, patient applied for) and frankly they deserve to be heard because this new release is immense. So here’s our second interview of the week with them, this time about their writing and recording process as they keep everything very much in house…

How does the writing process of a new Huminoid track start? Melody, riff or rhythm first? “For us it’s a riff idea first and then it branches out into parts. Someone would make rough demos of songs complete with the guitars, bass, and drums and then we kinda made it all together in the studio. That’s usually how we wrote our stuff. For the vocals it’s always done last… we do write together in a room, but we always had the initial riff idea or song idea first and then we finished the song in the studio together”

Before you go into the studio, do you do any pre-production work or is it just rehearsals to get the material tight? “We kinda just rehearsed it actually haha. After a song is finished we usually just practice a lot to nail the material tight and then we just go straight into recording. Personally, I do wanna try to do pre-pro or maybe work with a producer, maybe on the next release or album”

Do you play songs live before committing them to tape? “Well, yes we do, but with the pandemic almost all of our material has never been played live haha” [The Great Plague will eventually come to and end! ~Ed]

For us gear nerds out there, can you tell us what you’re using gear wise (pedals, strings, drums etc) to get your sound? “For the guitars, I use a Fender Strat with Humbuckers Jim Root Signature Models straight to a Zoom G3n with my own settings for live performances. Our other guitar player, Fernando, uses an Epiphone SG model with Seymour Duncan Screamin’ Demons and for the pedals he uses a Metal Muff Electro Harmonix to a Mooer Mod Factory pedal. Both of us use a local string manufacturer called Djabon Strings with 0.60s gauges strings. Our bass player Mario uses an Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay Bass. Zacky uses a Yamaha DFP double pedal for the kicks. For recording we usually add more stuff from digital presets as layers to beefen up the sound”

When you’re tracking your drums are you using a click track or are you fans of the more volatile feel from free flow that producers like Ross Robinson are advocates of? “No, we never used a click track before. As the person who handles all the recordings, I prefer more free flowing like Ross Robinson like you said. We didn’t use click tracks just to have the ‘organic’ feel of us playing live. We prefer just our drummer and our guitarists playing together in a room with headphones. Plus we have a crazy tight ass drummer in the first place haha”

What difference would it make to you as a band if you could land an endorsement from a gear manufacturer? “To be honest, if we got those opportunities, it would ease so much pain haha. Free strings and heads? Hell yeah haha. And we didn’t have to be worried about breaking stuff on the road if we could just make a call and someone send a new set of cymbals or heads”

If you want this pair of EPs then head on over to bandcamp