ONCE HUMAN, the new band featuring former MACHINE HEAD and SOULFLY guitarist Logan Mader, has uploaded the third in a series of webisodes featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the group’s recent U.S. tour with FEAR FACTORY. Check it out below.
ONCE HUMAN’s debut album, “The Life I Remember”, was released on September 4 via earMUSIC. The cover artwork for the CD was created by Seth Siro Anton.
When people think of Logan Mader, they remember the flying dreads, a flying V, and deadly volume, performing with the likes of MACHINE HEAD and SOULFLY. It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 12 years since Mader set foot onstage. Now an in-demand music producer/mixer who has worked with FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, GOJIRA and PERIPHERY, he had written off the performing part of his life and settled behind the scenes.
Still, something within him stirred.
Former Roadrunner A&R chief and current Nuclear Blast Entertainment head Monte Conner sent newcomer and multi-instrumentalist Lauren Hart to Logan Mader for a production deal. A creative spark between the two forged the nexus of ONCE HUMAN, as Hart moved from guitars to vocals, unsheathing a throat-scarring level of vocal brutality that completely contradicts her soft appearance. Unexpectedly, the result brought Mader back to creative life as both artist and performer.
“This music that we’ve been writing is undeniable to me,” Mader told RockRevoltMagazine.com. “It got me real excited. It has this crazy intuition and excitement that I haven’t felt for many years, [that] I haven’t felt since the beginning of MACHINE HEAD. I felt something. This is something special and I need to do this. It was like an inner voice telling me that this is my shit. It’s the combination of our musical chemistry, it is ONCE HUMAN. [Lauren] and I write all the music together and all the lyrics. She came to me with this really brutal metal. She comes from a more black metal/European style. My inner guitar player, my real passion (as a player) is that kind of music. So, combining that with where she comes from, is what ended up shaping the ONCE HUMAN sound. Incidentally, it is really brutal and heavy, and dark, often beautiful at times. It allowed me to do the kind of guitar riffs that are really mean and have a lot of attitude, and are really expressive in a rough guitar riffs sense.”
Asked about the similarities between his and Hart’s musical visions, Mader said: “It’s kind of like what I was just talking about. My natural inclinations plus the music she is passionate about; the music that she loves. The thing that I found intriguing and magnetic about that is that she did not come to L.A. to become famous and make whatever kind of music it would take to get famous. She didn’t care about that at all. She wanted to do the music that she was passionate about. Incidentally, the kind of music that we are doing is the least profitable genre of music. [Laughs] People don’t do it to get rich and famous. They do it because they love it. That was refreshing to me. For me, that was important as well, because I fucking love music. The reason I started playing music in the beginning was not because I have an agenda to become famous and make money. It was because I had a passion for it; a real passion. It’s something that you can’t deny within yourself.”
The rhythm section of ONCE HUMAN consists of Damian Rainauld on bass and Ralph Alexander on drums.
Source: Blabbermouth
