Review Summary: The raw emotion of Aesthetic Perfection shows in their debut, making for an essential listen for electro/industrial fans
Right from the very beginning, with a robotic monologue about what makes us who we are as humans (it’s not as gay as it sounds), you can tell this is going to be a little different. This is the one-man aggrotech act Aesthetic Perfection’s debut LP, and it’s not as most fans know it here.
Close to Human is more raw, emotional, and hateful than in the band’s later works. The music is also a lot less in-your-face and abrasive, it’s more to have the listener get lost in all the emotion Daniel Graves put into the album rather than party to it. However, if you wanted, that certainly wouldn’t be very difficult either.
The mood the album gives off is very angry. I said it was emotional, and that’s the main emotion going on here. The hatred and anger in the music is not only harsh and aggressive, but also strangely alluring. It’s like it sucks you in to where even if you wanted to turn off a song, you couldn’t. It’s just so…mesmerizing. The vocals are part of the reason, they’re quite different from what you might be used to in EBM. They’re every recognizable and not as distorted as usual which gives the album a little more of a personal feel. Daniel’s voice may be something you have to get used to but after a while you’ll love them. Another differentiating factor from his other work would be the lack of clean vocals. Nothing but violent screams and some whispers at the beginning of
Overcast.
Of course, the vocals wouldn’t matter as much if there weren’t such fantastic beats and synth behind them. The songs are put together very well, aside from a few boring instrumental tracks. While the album is usually really consistent, those handful of instrumentals kind of mess up the general flow. The melody towards the middle of
Ersatz is interesting but for the most part they’re rather lackluster. Everything else, however, from the calm and sinister
Overcast to the fast and energetic
Fix, are top notch and fit in perfectly.
It’s slightly familiar yet still feels fresh and original, revealing a side of Aesthetic Perfection that not many know about, and after hearing
All Beauty Destroyed, I’d say that side is long gone. This is just as good when you just feel like chilling out as it is when you want to get up and shake dat ass. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the mood for this or not, as soon as you play a song off it you’ll be in the mood. From the melodies to the beats to the pissed-off vocals,
Close to Human has something to say and it’s not going to let itself not be heard.
