Review: Puny Human

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Puny Human
“It’s not the Heat, It’s the Humanity”
(Smallstone)

Puny Human creates little excitement on their second album of light metal. It’s mostly a tepid and one-dimensional affair. But what do you expect from a band whose drummer has a day job as an MTV news correspondent? If you don’t know him by name, you’d recognize him by face. Iann Robinson: chubby white guy, sometimes shaved head, plethora of tattoos and MTV’s go-to guy for heavy metal news stories (so that’s like what, twice a month he gets some air time?).

Well, it seems MTV has its own John Tesh, an entertainment journalist by day, quasi-musician by night. But just because Robinson works for the monolithic network and sits next to Carson Daly when they’re getting their make up done, it doesn’t make Puny Human an awful band. His lack of talent, and that of his band members, gets the blame for that.

There’s not one decent track on this album that culls the sounds of Grand Funk Railroad, ZZ Top and White Zombie for a mix of heavy 70s rock with hollow riffs not worth a two-fingers-as-horns salute, let alone your hard-earned money. In short, there’s not enough grime under their fingernails to give their sound some much-needed dirt.