“I’m just glad it’s coming out. I’m really happy that it’s finally time,” says vocalist Lauren Hart, who along with guitarist Logan Mader (Machine Head / Soulfly) spearhead modern metal band Once Human. The group will release their explosive third album, Scar Weaver, on February 11 via earMusic. Described by the label as, “a versatile and sinewy new strain of brutal but accessible metal,” Scar Weaver is comprised of ten musical compositions that are both captivating and dynamic. 

“It was done a year or two ago, pre-Covid,” reveals Hart, referring to Scar Weaver. “But then when we were given more time; I’m a perfectionist! So, I’m going to take it and re-write and re-write and re-write. I work best under deadlines, and I write best under pressure. But if I’m given too much time, I’m just going to try and make everything better. Max (Karon, guitarist) did some re-writes, I did some re-writes; we scrapped some songs and put some new ones into the mix. But the good news is, it really helped us through that first year of being in lockdown. We were all in a studio together, cause at the time we all lived together in Vegas. Logan (Mader, guitarist) had a studio in the house, so it was very productive. We were all really lucky that we had that access.”

Scar Weaver is super aggressive and energetic, while simultaneously being cathartic, making the frustrations of everyday life due to pandemic-related restrictions easier to deal with. Logan commented, “The first two albums, we were still finding our way.” Lauren shares what sets Scar Weaver apart from its predecessors – The Life I Remember (2015) and Evolution (2017): “The biggest change was the introduction of (guitarist) Max Karon. We met during the tour for the first album with Fear Factory; he was their guitar tech. Max showed us his music, and the riffs that he wrote. We immediately asked if he would be interested in joining the band or writing with us. He said yes, and soon after he began writing, he did join the band officially. So, Evolution was the introduction of Max; yet Logan and I still played a big role in the writing of everything. But Scar Weaver is 100% Max Karon! Logan didn’t write on this album. Max wrote all the music; I wrote all the lyrics and the top lines (vocal melodies). Maybe the next album won’t be like that, but we wanted Max to feel like he could be 100% himself on this album. He wanted to express himself as a musician, and we wanted to give him that. Plus, Logan was on tour with Machine Head (celebrating the 25th anniversary of Burn My Eyes). When he came home, Max had already done ten songs! And Logan felt they didn’t need any re-arranging or changing, so that’s how the music came about. Then I took my time with the lyrics and the top lines, simply because I had a lot of extra time.”

Up until this point, Lauren and Logan had been the focal point of Once Human. But now it seems that Max is up there front and center. “Yes, yes,” affirms Lauren. And of course, we can’t forget the rhythm section – Damien Rainaud and Dillon Trollope do a stellar job on bass and drums respectively. “Yes, and Dillon did have a lot of, I guess you would call it writing, with the drums. Max definitely thought it was considered writing. He said that without Dillon’s particular choices on drums, his riffs wouldn’t sound as good as they do. They really worked together on the musical side of things.”

Prior to speaking with BraveWords, Lauren had been quoted as saying, “Vocally, I’ve changed a lot since the last record. My screams got lower and the cleans became stronger.” A statement which she now elaborates upon. “I think it came with experience. When Max entered the picture, the whole tone dropped. He brought in his seven-string, and I felt like the higher screams just weren’t cutting it for the style. So, I did try to teach myself how to go deeper; but that came naturally. The more that I scream, for some reason, the lower they get. I don’t know how that clicked to be honest. I don’t know the science behind it. I can’t really explain it because I’m not a vocal coach. But with the cleans, I can explain. That came very much with Kamelot asking me to join for their world tour (in 2018 / 2019) and being on their album (The Shadow Theory). I got thrown in the deep end with the cleans and became very confident singing on stage with them every night. So, I sort of gained this confidence in myself through them, and I’m so grateful for that. Before, when I first started Once Human, I didn’t even want to sing. I was too scared; I didn’t think I could. With this album (Scar Weaver), it was really important to me to write cleans that I knew I could pull off live. I can’t write these little quiet cleans, like on Evolution, going into these screams because, on stage, the screams are so loud that the mic has to be turned way down. Then, when the cleans come, people can’t hear me, unless the sound guy knows exactly when to turn me all the way up. With this new album, it’s the same level the whole way through with the cleans. I put in a little bit of rasp, and it’s an easy transition for me. But I thought the tone was kind of cool too, so it worked for everyone.”

It’s mind-blowing to hear Lauren admit that she didn’t want to sing in the beginning, as she exudes such confidence on stage and in all of the Once Human videos. “Oh, thank you,” gushes the vocalist. “Yeah, I was afraid. I guess, when you think of a singer, my mind automatically goes to Whitney Houston or Adele. Back in those days, I thought, ‘I can’t sing like that,’ so I’m not a singer. But there’s different styles and different character in everyone; I just had to discover myself. I had to discover my own voice, rather than thinking about everyone else’s and saying, I can’t be them.”

The album title, Scar Weaver, is also the name of track three. “That, I give Damien (Rainaud, bassist) credit for,” explains Lauren. “I was writing the song, ‘Scar Weaver’, and in the chorus, I was missing that one powerful word. I’d been searching and searching and searching, I was on the phone with Damien, my bass player, and he said, ‘How about Scar Weaver?’ That’s f*cking brilliant! Did you just come up with that? ‘No, I’ve had it in my head for a while, I thought it sounded cool.’ It sounds amazing! So, I looked it up on Google to make sure it hadn’t been used already, and it hadn’t – I fell in love with it! In fact, it became the album title. That was very much Damien.”

The album cover itself is a picture of Lauren, underwater, but she’s certainly not drowning. “The album art… we were going around with album titles and not sure. Our artist, Seth Siro Anton (from Speticflesh), typically likes to have a title before he makes his art, cause it inspires him, obviously. So, we were throwing him all these different titles that were already in the album, such as Bottom Feeder. We were tossing that around, maybe that could be the album title. But it wasn’t sitting right with me, partially because I think there’s many songs and albums called Bottom Feeder, but also because if you have a dirty mind, you’re not going to be able to get past that,” laughs Lauren. “So, we didn’t end up naming it that, but I really think Bottom Feeder was what inspired the artist to make this artwork. He also did the single cover for ‘Deadlock’; those were our two choices for the album. But ‘Deadlock’, the artwork really looks like ‘Deadlock’ to me. It looks like the actual description of ‘Deadlock’. So, we decided to use that for ‘Deadlock’, then we went with my image underwater as the album. It was mostly just, again, having all this time and tossing all these things around, and not really knowing… that’s how it ended up.”

The aforementioned “Deadlock” was the first single / video from Scar Weaver, issued on July 1st 2021. It features a guest appearance from Robb Flynn of Machine Head. Obviously, there’s a treasured history with Logan and Robb, but what a great way to bring initial attention to the new Once Human album. “Yeah, we’re really grateful he wanted to do that. What happened was, I completed this song. I had a chorus on there before we had Robb on there. I had the song all done except for the intro and parts of the verse. We were thinking originally, that intro sounds quite nu metal, it just sounded like something we could really hear Robb doing those rhythmic – I don’t want to call it rap – but those nu metal style vocals. So, we wanted to ask him to be a guest, and we didn’t think he was going to say yes, because at the time, he’d never really done a guest feature. But he liked the song, and he’s like, ‘Let me see what I can do.’ Logan was so happy; he was so stoked! I, of course, was through the roof! A few days later, Robb sent back the song – with my chorus gone. He put a new chorus on there. And his chorus just ripped mine to shreds. It’s so much better; an automatic hook. The only word he kept in mind was Deadlock. His chorus made that song special. We went back and forth for the verse, then I did the ‘Obey, obey’ over the beginning. I could not believe that it happened! It’s one of those things, again, if it wasn’t for Covid… good things can happen out of chaos. He wouldn’t have had the time maybe. Of course, for the world, I wish that Covid never happened, but at the same time, good things can happen in the worst of times – and this was definitely one of them for me. Robb had the time to do something with Once Human. Then he did the video too, so that was like a double whammy!”

Scar Weaver features nine originals and one cover song - “We Ride” by Strapping Young Lad - which is amazing! “We Ride” appears on SYL’s Alien album, which was released in 2005. “That was Max (Karon, guitarist). I told him I wanted to do a cover, and he picked ‘We Ride’ by Strapping Young Lad. I was like, ‘You expect me to do Devin Townsend? This is not happening.’ But it happened, and again it was another thing where I was thrown into the deep end. I pushed through it, and I came out the other side feeling like I learnt something. It was a lot of fun! Logan’s an incredible vocal producer, and he really did help make me sound great on that. I was intimidated, but we got through it. We made a video for it and sent it to Devin, he said he liked it.”

That makes four videos which have been released from Scar Weaver thus far. “Yes, and there’s going to be more,” teases Lauren. “Because we had such a long rollout, we decided to make more videos to fill in the time. Also, because, my original idea, I really wanted to make a video for every single song on the album. Because a lot of people, unfortunately, wouldn’t hear the songs without a video; but that’s not exactly possible. Especially nowadays, getting together is quite difficult; but we have two or three more music videos coming out that are already filmed.”

Lauren described the second single / video from Scar Weaver, “Only In Death”, as “my most personal song on the new album.” “Yeah… I don’t know how I would elaborate without getting too personal. Let me think… I’m not exactly sure how to elaborate on that one. It is very personal to me.” The video for “Only In Death” is completely different than the video for “Deadlock”. There’s no band performance, in fact Lauren is the only member of Once Human that appears on screen; with Hart and Mader filming it themselves. “Yeah, we went guerilla style. Broke into a couple places we weren’t meant to be and got kicked out. It was good though; it was fun to really be hands-on with this one; it was important to me. And the editing was done by Thomas Crane, who did the video for ‘Cold Arrival’. I think he really took our footage and made it special and artistic; I could never edit like that. I’m really glad he did that.”

“Cold Arrival” is another personal song, written in memory of Lauren’s friend Jared, who sadly, is no longer with us. “So, Max, Logan, and I all lived in this house in Vegas. Back in 2016, Max found a little ad on the back of his receipt from this store about a spin class. He went in and met Jared, and they hit it off. It was very small – basically just Max and Jared in a lot of these classes. He brought Logan and I along; I’ve always been into spin class, so I immediately loved it! We were in there three days a week, sometimes more. It was always just us and Jared, so he would play metal for us as we were cycling along, it was great. Then Jared became friends with us and would come over to the house and hang out. Then on the Cobra And The Lotus tour, he gave us spin bikes to take along on tour. Unfortunately, I wrecked one of them, and I feel terrible about it to this day – just going in and out of the trailer, it got scratched up. Jared was a friend, and he suddenly was just gone. It was so unexpected, especially because he was so young and healthy – a cycle coach. This was the first time I’d ever experienced loss like that. Everyone expects, you prepare for your grandparents and the elderly. But somebody young like that, when they’re just gone one day, I was really impacted by it, more than I thought I would be. So, I wrote about him in that song.”

Changing gears just slightly, the video for “Cold Arrival” was filmed on the Lustmord and Tourgasm tour in October 2021 with Cradle Of Filth. “I really studied Dani Filth,” admits Lauren. “I would watch him do those high notes – how does he do it? You know who actually figured it out was Damien. He started doing it, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t figure it out. We have two completely different techniques, I think. What Dani does is something that just hasn’t clicked in my head yet. I don’t know how to do it, but it’s incredible to watch.” Imagine a duet between Hart and Filth. “Oh, I would love that! I love Dani. We got along really well, he’s a really funny guy, and his whole band, they’re all really great.”

(Photos: Jeremy Saffer)