Nearly four years to the day a 37-strong group of hearing-impaired music fans turned up for a Songs for the Deaf night at a Hull club, only to find out Queens of the Stone Age were actually promoting their album of the same name, Humanzi release Tremors. In the event that any seismologists pitch up by mistake to see the Dublin band support their debut release, there’s no danger they’ll call trading standards, as did the outraged Humberside contingent, to complain. For this avalanche of noise registers, at a guess, ooh at least 5.0 on the Richter magnitude scale.

Humanzi, named after a story about a human breeding with a chimpanzee, are guitarist/keyboard player/lead vocalist Shaun Mulrooney , Colm Rutledge on guitar and backing vocals, bass player Gary Lonergan, and Brian Gallagher on drums and backing vocals. Following a frenzied bidding war the band play down in interviews, they signed to Polydor imprint Fiction, home also to Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Cure. Not that they particularly sound like either with Mulrooney describing Humanzi as “21st century punk-rockers.”

Yet on ‘Song For Understanding’, they run the risk of plagiarizing The Editors. Taking the fact The Eds are hardly the most original band out there at the moment into account, that’s no great crime. Elsewhere, Mulrooney and co capture both sides of the Primal Scream experience, the dance-friendly beats and the ballsier, but more conventional, rock ‘n’ roll.

Political without being particularly polemical, Humanzi reveal their motto to be: “THIS IS THE SHIT SO GET USED TO IT!!!” The penultimate track on Tremors is called ‘Get Your Shit Together’. Whilst Freud would have a field day psychoanalyzing the band, they’re anally retentive rather than a bunch of arse.

Forget the explicit lyrics sticker, potential listeners should be warned that playing this album “can cause major damage to poorly constructed buildings over small regions”. Humanzi’s earthquakes, so it would seem, are rather more substantial than Tori Amo’s little ones. No wonder Dave Grohl’s such a fan.
(4˝/5)

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