Sometimes gothic bands try to sound far too much like previous bands because that is considered “goth”, however originally it was born out of the counter-culture of the punks and therefore extremely experimental. In some ways we have lost this genuine expression to be different and sound different.

From Chile hails the duo Humanfobia with their highly experimental style on the album Bailo con mis Pesadillas with 15 tracks in all. Mist Spectra is the female vocal while Sábila Orbe is the programmer and male vocals.

“Fantasma en la Carretera (Dance Version)” starts this off….it’s not so much dance as a hypnotic beat with Mist Spectra cooing to you. No idea what she is saying as my Spanish is non-existent and yet language has never been a barrier with music.

As is much of this album, “Adios Mundo Cruel (Cancion para Suicidarse)” is off kilter and uneasy. Haunting could be the word as they say goodbye cruel world.

Sequenced drums and bleeps gives us the feeling we aren’t quite in a chanting raising of the dead, not yet anyways on the title track “Bailo con mis Pesadillas”.

The beginning of “Vacio Hermetico” makes you think you are about to get a dance track but no and that beat recurs and grows becoming less friendly. A nightmare revisiting and maybe a portent.

Ever have a song make you think of whales? “Arboles Deshojados” sounds like the song of humpback whales, that beautiful calling out while a tape runs backwards, or so it seems.

The unnatural creaks like Diamanda Galas are reminisent in “Calles Lobregas” while “Colapso Dimensional II” is a little more etheral but still with that air of uneasiness as the tempo is always in flux.

“Mareo Lugubre” is atmospheric with its computer enhanced vocals. Orbe lends his growling vocals to “Sombre Nigromante” until we land in the “Mausoleum of Ruins” with the eerie female vocals of Spectra and electronica that warbles in and out and a pervasive fuzzy tone.

One of the longer numbers is “Chant from the Grave (with Wertredgreen)” which makes me think of Twin Peaks, with that feel that things are going backwards rather than forwards.

“Buried By Mistake” at just over a minute long is an interlude to the next song “Catalepsy”. Does this mean catatonic death like state after an epileptic fit? In fact this really was a thing and some poor suffers were put into the ground alive. This fits in to the whole buried by mistake.

We revisit “Arboles Deshojados (Atmospheric Version)” and just when you ask how could it get much more atmospheric, it sounds like we are in a pea soup fog with extra shadows thank you.

Aaaaaand lastly for all you that absolutely love the whole death and spectral show, there is a 30 second EVP done at San Fernando cemetary. If you dare, what will you hear???

Those who remember Diamanda Galas, will see much in common with Humanfobia. Theatrical and highly avant-garde though more spooky and haunted than Galas who was far more like a full on demonic ritual gone very wrong (or very right depending on your stance). Mist Spectra is far more mellow and laid back.

This is most definitely mood music and won’t be something you hear on the dance floor. It is quirky and atmospheric and will more than likely scare your normal friends but then that’s half the fun. Ghostly haunting, buried alive, the unmentionable things that inhabit the graveyard and then there is Humanfobia with Bailo con mis Pesadillas which literally means I Dance With My Nightmares.

This album is for free download on their Bandcamp site.

bandcamp: humanfobia-official.bandcamp.com
hearthis: hearthis.at/humanfobia/
facebook: www.facebook.com/humanfobia/