Stephen
Human Cometh was consisted of veteran prominent musicians that mostly have around 30 years of experiences under their belt, all of them have wide area of influences, from the virtuosity of Van Halen, the psychedelic embrace of Porcupine Tree, to the heavy hitters of Iron Maiden, and the result that was shown in 'Evolution' is very original and perhaps could be one of the most unique sounding material you ever encountered.
"Aiming High" and "Himalaya" have that downtuned rhythm feel as if they're coming straight from the grungy era of 1993 but still rolling on the traditional hard rock platform and Morgan Pettersson's killer solos are like fireball shot fiercely from his axe. "Jaded" has that heavier groove while "White Sky" tends to slow down a bit, but honestly the first four tracks are simply average hard rock done well.
"Stalker In The Night" started to get better. The swaggering uptempo sweep of keyboards and stampeding riffs are stunning. This might be the most progressive side of Human Cometh and Pettersson steals the show again with his brilliant solo. "No Fear" puts big amount of melodies to the arrangement and turns out to be a great hard rock tune. "Cross The River Styx" is an astonishing piece of superior instrumental twist. Unfortunately, "Morning Star" and "Irukandji" can't keep up the momentum and they're going back to that decency again.
Talking about their originality, What seems to be winning key can lead to another confusion, imagine your standard hard rock style was swirled with grungy and doomy tuning and progressive tempo, I bet it's not for everyone. Singer Kaj Roth performed an impeccable singing but the real show belongs to Pettersson's magnificent delivery. 3-4 great tracks and the rest suffers with no real strong hooks and memorable sing-along lines. Acceptable start, only needs to be improved with much bigger songwriting to prevail in the future.