The fifth studio album of alternative band Gorillaz released just a few weeks ago. Titled “Humanz” the album takes their music in a much more modern direction, and is accompanied by a collection of talented feature artists.

“Humanz” boasts a predominantly rap song selection, but keeps in line with Gorillaz’ varied tones in their music. Moments featuring De La Soul, and We Got The Power featuring Jehnny Beth are songs about enjoying life while it lasts, with fun, bouncy beats. Busted and Blue and Saturnz Barz are somber, slower paced songs about people’s interconnection to each other, and about losing one’s life to a gambling addiction, respectively.

Busted and Blue is the sole song on the album in which there are no feature artists. The song most closely relates to Gorillaz previous albums, and keeps in time with the songs that made them big.

My personal favorite tracks on the new album are Ascension featuring Vince Staples, Momentz featuring De La Soul, Ticker Tape featuring Kali Uchis and Carly Simon, and lastly Saturnz Barz featuring Popcaan.

My only complaint about the album is that some of the songs are very similar. It feels like with some songs, if you’ve heard one of them, you’ve heard the others. They can become very similar in tone and rhythm, but this doesn’t detract from the overall quality of the album too heavily.

My overall opinion of the album is that it’s very fresh, and I enjoyed listening to it. I most certainly recommend it to both die-hard fans, and new listeners.