Highly Suspect Applies The Human Touch On Their New Single

Such great memories I have of Highly Suspect's "Lydia". It had a scrappy edge to it, particularly where the lead guitar was concerned. Grit as far as the ear could hear. Fast forward to now and the Cape Cod outfit pulls from its bag of tricks, straight from "The Boy Who Died Wolf", "My Name Is Human", which delves into our collective atomic makeup. For openers give Johnny Stevens the nod for mesmerizing listeners with a guitar starter apparently plucked from the center of the Earth's molten core. Quite a probing sound at work, getting to the heart of what it means to be us. Johnny's vocals are also right there in our faces, daring us not to notice he has our vulnerabilities by the jugular. Highly Suspect shines on chorus work. In this instance it pulls up cosmic dust and washes it over us in rampant styles that leave us totally awestruck at how heavy their world weightiness truly becomes. The opening notes practically have you in mindset of hovering over the Earth, dazzled at what you are seeing and at the same time intimidated by our relatively small place in it, which is amusing given how many of us go through life trying to find just where our place in this world might be. If we're lucky we get to that place but, many fall short of self-actualization. Rich Meyer excels on bass, especially in laying down a particularly daunting backdrop for we the people to hit the most ebony corners of our soul, that part of us which doesn't die. The song, at least to these ears, sounds broad in scope and message. It digs deep to get that alt rock production value Soundgarden would have approved of. Lyrically the general gist can be summed up in one concept. We're all on a level playing field here. Nobody's better than anybody else. Chinks in the armor are par for the course here amongst us armor clad warriors. This track clocks in at 4:18 seconds but the lush orchestration gives it a 5:00 plus bravado that rubs off indelibly. Rich's brother Ryan lays down modest drumming that doesn't demand we pay too much attention, just enough to note that he's going about his business in a workmanlike way that allows Johnny's chops to assume control of the playing field. "My Name Is Human" doesn't pull any punches at any time. It sets us straight regarding how much we really matter. From a fusion vantage point all the players join up to make an incredible noise that is bigger than any one person. The shift from main verse to chorus is jarring but easily embraced after you wiggle your toes around in that water. That shows Highly Suspect isn't a one trick pony at all. It starts of pondering in a Carl Sagan kind of style then leaps into a beefier melody. If you want a scientific perspective they don't come much more textbook Sagan than "Hello, my name is human and I came down from the stars." In summation Highly Suspect puts the human condition under a microscope and what we get back in return staggers the imagination.