The modern Boston hardcore scene really came together in 2017-2018 in a sense that many of the bands that came up around that time set the standard and soundscape for what is currently coming out. Bands like Buried Dreams, Vein.fm, Mourned, and many others from that era who are still going strong, with many even newer ones drawing influence from records released from that time period.
One band that came out of that scene was God Tier, a hardcore band that added a strong dosage of heaviness to the local scene. They played for a few years before taking a break and the members went off into other projects. Now they’ve reconnected and reinvented the band with an equally heavy sound.
Human Form is what comes out of that revival.
Vocalist Matt Azevedo—who currently also plays guitar for local heroes Street Power—wanted to breathe new life into the project as he felt the creative buzz coming from the vibrant Boston scene. Maintaining the heaviness and same members from the original run, Matt decided to change the moniker to Human Form as he explains, “the name God Tier didn’t hold up so I decided to give the band a new name. Same members just a new name.”
Human Form recently dropped their debut release, an 8-track offering called Strangled By Life:
Matt has been going to shows for about a decade now, seeing some of the scene's biggest names when they were starting out playing in smaller clubs like 3065 Live, Anchors Up, and Presidents Rock Club. Seeing bands such as Suburban Scum, Rude Awakening, Revenge, Cruel Hand and many others when he was still in high school had a particular influence on what he wanted to do when he started a band.
“Mostly when I write music I just think ‘are people gonna go crazy when they see this live?’ If I feel that way then that’s what I do.” Matt demonstrated this skill when writing music for Street Power and he even admits that some of the songs utilized for Human Form were “too heavy for Street Power.”
From the start, Matt handled both the songwriting and lyrics and got together with Olin May (guitar), brothers Cam and Mitch Hogg handling bass and drums, respectively and Ryan Goff as second guitarist. Sticking with the same lineup allows the band to create the same heavy-as-fuck music that they were churning out three years ago right before the pandemic.
Matt’s skill at creating heavy riffs packed over driving rhythms has only gotten better over the years and even with a lot of this new material remaining the same the band sounds just as strong as his recent projects. “I had to rewrite a lot of the stuff I ripped for Street Power because I admittedly took some of the old God Tier stuff and used it for that project. So really only a few riffs are new and some lyrics have changed,” Matt explains on the band's current material.
After performing and writing with Street Power for the last year and a half, Matt decided to bring back his old band members under the new name Human Form. Matt explained the reason for the change was “the older stuff for the band felt kind of all over the place and chaotic. Here I feel like I’m a bit more focused and everything flows a lot more smoothly. Still just as heavy but we’ve grown a bit.” Matt also decided to revamp what he had written before and record it for Strangled By Life.
The lyricism on Human Form’s new record, as many bands of their ilk, dwells in the negative feelings that come from living life in the crumbling society we wake up to everyday. Matt’s vicious vocal delivery amplifies these words the same way Vein.fm did on their early EPs. Touching on his lyrical influences Matt explains, “Jeremy from Lifeless is probably my favorite lyricist of all time because you never have to guess what he’s talking about, he just says it. He doesn’t waste time with metaphors and I didn’t want to do that either.”
Matt’s vocal work, as shown before in God Tier and Street Power, elevates his lyricism as he delivers his lines with near throat-shredding levels of ferocity. Despite bringing a sort of heaviness with this band he still delivers the vocals in a way that’s just as ferocious as and spirited as he does within his other projects. The darker mood of Human Form’s record makes his lyrics and delivery all the more brooding and hopeless, like someone brought to the edge of life and screaming one last helpless cry to the heavens.
The album’s artwork and overall sound and content is reminiscent of one of Matt’s favorite bands in recent years, Division of Mind. “You know me all too well, they’re a huge influence on my sound for sure,” he jokes when I bring up the band's influence on their musical style.
Human Form hasn’t made an announcement yet for their first show but it will be coming very soon. A band as destructive and heavy as them deserves to be put in front of the right audience, so be on the lookout for any and all announcements from their social media pages. In the meantime listen to Strangled By Life, learn the words and brush up on your spinkicks so you don’t lose teeth in the pit.
Human Form would like to shoutout: Tim Sullivan from In Good Nature and Boundaries, Chris Cesarini, my girlfriend Maria for helping me make the album art, Dom from Simulakra, Boston and Massachusetts hardcore, thanks for making me feel like the music I make matters.
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Human Form on social media: Instagram | Bandcamp
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