UMUR "The Human Factor" is the 4th full-length studio album by US power/heavy metal act Metal Church. The album was released through Epic Records in March 1991. It´s the successor to "Blessing in Disguise" from 1989 and features the exact same five-piece lineup who recorded the predecessor.

Stylistically "The Human Factor" pretty much continues the US power/heavy metal sound of "Blessing in Disguise (1989)", but it´s generally a bit harder edged, direct, and powerful than the predecessor. The band sound more energetic and play even more like a tight unit here, and lead vocalist Mike Howe now sounds fully integrated. His performance here is strong, passionate, and convincing.

The material on the 10 track, 51:36 minutes long album are well written, memorable, and powerful US power/heavy metal songs. "The Human Factor" is an album featuring very few misteps (Personally I could have done without the brief funky moments on "Date With Poverty"), and the songwriting is consistent in quality and musical style. There´s not a single sub par track featured on the album, and all tracks feature strong riffs, great solo work, a powerful playing rhythm section, and the above mentioned commanding passionate vocals by Howe. It all comes together in a great way and makes perfect sense in the soundscape.

"The Human Factor" also features a powerful, raw, and detailed sound production, which suits the material perfectly, and upon conclusion it´s a high quality US power/heavy metal release by Metal Church. "Blessing in Disguise (1989)" is mostly the album people mention when discussing Howe-led Metal Church, but to my ears "The Human Factor" is actually the better album of those two. Being released in 1991 probably meant the album didn´t receive as much attention as is should have, but that doesn´t change the fact that it´s a strong release and that a 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

Kingcrimsonprog eattle’s Metal Church are an interesting band, hard to place. They can sound like a mixture between (fellow Seattle band) Queensryche and early Savatage at times, basically writing Thrash Metal at other times and writing big ‘80s Power Ballads at other times.

The previous album was a bit more serious and proggy. The one before that was their thrashiest of the early records and the one after this goes a bit stripped down. They cover a lot of ground, but I like all of their solid and diverse first five albums more or less equally.

Well, with one exception. Their fourth album, 1991’s The Human Factor is by far and away my favourite. This album is an absolute stand out. I don’t know what happened here, if it is the production, the song writing, or the performance, but this album just utterly smokes.

The album is consistent from beginning to end in a way that makes it hard to choose highlights. There is the ridiculously catchy hard rock single ‘Date With Poverty’ with memorable guitar hooks, there is the furious blood pumping Thrash attack of ‘The Final Word,’ ‘The Fight Song’ and ‘Flee From Reality.’ The opener ‘Human Factor’ has the same confidence of Symbol Of Salvation era Armored Saint.

Lyrically the album is really interesting too. ‘In Mourning’ is similar to Sacred Reich’s ‘Who’s To Blame?’ in the Metal-doesn’t-cause-suicide theme. ‘The Final Word’ seems to be a patriotic song about the good sides of America, ‘Date With Poverty’ is a socially aware track.

Musically, the album is utterly bombastic. The Marshall/Wells guitar team fill the album with a barrage of riffs and solos. The Erickson/Arrington rhythm section is on point. But the real star here are Mike Howe’s incredible vocals. The man has ‘some serious lungs on him’ as they say, an utter superstar vocal performance that elevates the record far above the competition. I mean as much as I have been big-ing up the album’s heavier moments, on ‘Agent Green’ (which seems to be an attempt to improve upon the popular ‘Watch The Children Play’ from the previous album) he sounds almost like Geddy Lee at times.

Overall; this album is great album in every way. It sounds great. The songs are great and the performances are particularly great. I would absolutely recommend this to any fan of Hard Rock, Metal.

Warthur Metal Church's The Human Factor is, by no means, a bad album - it's just an uninspiring one. For the first time in their career, Metal Church seemed to lose the initiative here, releasing an album which goes through the motions without evolving or advancing their sound interestingly and without producing any really standout tracks. Mike Howe's vocal performance, with its occasional slide towards Alice Cooper territory, is interesting enough, but everyone else seems to be snoozing. It's also the first Metal Church album which has lacked a really strong opener - stand the title track up against Fake Healer from the preceding album and the deficiency of this crop of material becomes all too clear.