A Small Crowd Gathered to Watch Me by Humour

It’s refreshing to see a vocalist in the heavy music scene really go out on a limb: not just to scream, but to emphatically vary their tone in a way that lends an emotional cadence to their poetry. Scottish post hardcore band Humour fills this niche quite nicely with their new record A Small Crowd Gathered to Watch Me, a brief look into a songwriter who desperately flings their discomfort with the world out in all directions. Thematically, this record acknowledges rootlessness head-on, concluding that history is ultimately either too evil or too tragic to want to relive, leaving Humour to pick up the pieces of a shattered identity. The band holds down a varied post hardcore sound, changing rapidly to adapt to lyrical shifts in a sound reminiscent of early IDLES. Of course, the loose cannon vocals are this record’s crowning jewel, stringing together shrill screams, throaty yells, defeated speech, and wailing singing to tell a story of a deeply troubled person in the midst of a mental breakdown.