Humangled was once called Putrid Sequence, back in the ’90s. Can you explain how Humangled came to be?

Andrew Goreds: Humangled was born when we (Goreds/Scurb) decided to transform Putrid Sequence, [a] grind-industrial duo, into a death metal band. The change of moniker became a necessity for the different music proposal and line-up configuration.

2010 has seen the release of your full-length, Fractal, on Abyss Records. How has the album been received so far?

Luke Scurb: We collected a lot of appreciation with our debut! The reviews we got till now [were] only best rates or totally bad. That also explains maybe why we like to say that “they can love us or hate us, there is no intermediate position.”

The songs on the new album are an interesting blend of blunt death metal, choppy progressive elements, and melancholy. Which bands have influenced your sound?

AG: There are of course traces of some classic bands like Death, Carcass, Pestilence and many others that we can’t deny; it’s quite normal being grown as musicians in the early 90s, but we don’t like to refer to any specific one but only to the overall “taste” of death metal that includes both aggressive-brutal and groovy-melodic elements.

How do you feel the band has progressed from Edge of Beyond to Fractal?

LS: The music proposal of Humangled is in progress. Since the beginning we had no idea about “how” our ideas can be explained. Our sound, and lyrics too, are improving from time to time. We felt that the CD Edge of Beyond was really a boundary overpassed by Fractal and now the opinion of the audience conforms to what we think about our sound.

Fractal was mixed and mastered by the mighty Dan Swanö. How did you get together with him?

AG: It was really a pleasure for us to get an immediate connection with a master like Dan, when we exposed in our emails the idea of [the] sound we wanted to have in our first album. We wanted to contact a pro like him to avoid a lack of quality in the mixing/mastering process, in our choice also consider[ed] the extent of his musician and producer experiences.

You released a demo, Anatomic Butchery, in 1997, and then Refoetalize came out in 2007. What was the band doing during that span of 10 years between the two?

LS: We disbanded for personal reasons. Not properly for misunderstandings, but just because we had different intentions and incompatible ways to reach the same goals.

Why does Humangled choose to write lyrics in the English language?

AG: We feel it quite natural, because our will is to produce a composite message of music plus visuals plus lyrics, and being understandable to as many as possible make[s] (American) English a key part of this process.

Are there any touring plans in your future?

LS: Unfortunately not at the moment. Many are asking for this, but we cannot confirm anything precisely for now.

What are some great extreme Italian metal groups that you think we should check out?

AG: Some acts from Italy are now getting known, not anymore in power metal only, and we really appreciate some of them like Illogicist, Hour of Penance and Fleshgod Apocalypse.

Is there anything else that I’ve failed to ask that we should know?

LS: Not really, thanks! But we take the occasion to say that our motto, “hypocrisy demands brutality,” is a common line for Humangled songs that deprecate some of the human aberrations. In fact, the album[‘s] purpose is to explain that how nature compose[s] fractal forms, mind and human behaviours are fractal as well. We like to add “splatter/gore” spicy elements but not to write about themes of pure fantasy, as we think reality is a good source for death metal ideas.

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