Guitar-driven melodies were once overwhelmingly commonplace in metal and hard rock music, but in 2022, they’re not quite as contemporary as they used to be. This isn’t because of an underground lacking in fret-born energy, however, and the likes of Dark Below are challenging the narrative with their new single “Hate Being Human” this autumn.
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/darkbelowmusic?lang=en
There’s a lot about “Hate Being Human” that initially strikes the ear as being old-fashioned – the guitar-heavy presence in the mix, the lack of an efficient bassline, drums that follow the tempo of a chorus hook – but when put into practice, this winning blueprint sounds no more retro than a hip-hop beat. Dark Below has one thing going for them that very few of their indie counterparts do, and that’s discipline. In this single, they don’t just present us with the chest-beating pulse of what a rock n’ roll song is supposed to sound like, but they instead produce a focused attack that embodies what rock n’ roll is supposed to feel like. They love the music in addition to knowing the ins and outs of making a lean and mean composition even tighter, and their labor delivers quite an interesting listen in this track.
The arrangement of the instrumentation is probably the poppiest element of “Hate Being Human,” but I wouldn’t say that everything in this song is made to build toward the hook. There’s just as much attention afforded to the percussion’s pushiness as there is to the depth of the guitar parts as they guide forth the lead vocal, which has not been true of the last few rock singles I’ve covered out of the similarly intriguing British and Canadian undergrounds.
The tempo here is the perfect agent to facilitate catharsis on the other side of the chorus, which makes up for the lack of a strong refrain in “Hate Being Human” before we ever reach the latter half of the track. This mix is on the tighter side, but you can tell Dark Below was thinking about how they could avoid going over the top, even with the production elements a lot of listeners don’t particularly care about. The tone in this release is of premium importance to these guys, and just listening to one of the hot licks in this song verifies as much.
SMART URL: https://onerpm.link/hatebeinghuman
If this is just a glimpse into what Dark Below could potentially put out in the future, they’re going to get a swell of interest from rock fans in and around North America who have been demanding something fresh of this variety for a long time now. Gone is the muscularity of a consistent scene in Chicago, Los Angeles, or even NYC – in 2022, bands like Dark Below are not even close to being a dime a dozen, and that’s why “Hate Being Human” sounds as incendiary as it does this November. This is a guitar-powered piece of pure brawn that doesn’t apologize for the space it takes up in the air around us, which in my book is precisely what has been missing from the FM dial lately.
Troy Johnstone