[Cover photo credit to Nikolaj Bransholm]

Danish Progressive Metal band Only Human signed with Season of Mist at the beginning of 2026 ahead of an appearance at this year’s Sweden Rock Festival. Their debut album, Planned Obsolescence, sets out to “warn of our not-too-distant dystopia”, and arrives on March 26, 2026.

The single and video for “Automata” are out now.

Vocalist Patrick Grønbæch Christensen says about their debut effort:

The album is supposed to wake people up to all the ways technocracy is encroaching on society. Tech companies often design their products to have an expiration date, so that we’re forced to replace them with the newest model. Through our social media and the adoption of influencer culture, we now live in a reality where humans are products to be consumed and disposed.

The band’s name comes from a pivotal scene in the film The Matrix.

Christensen says of their ethos:

We like a lot of bands that just play rock music, but we wanted ONLY HUMAN to be about something. We’re interested in creating a musical universe that portrays a future on the brink of collapse.

Planned Obsolescence reckons with technology’s increasingly hostile takeover. One of the first songs that Only Human wrote together was the lead single “Automata” which indicates that brain rot may be “the silent killer for today’s digital age”, but it also explores how “greed and invasive technologies fight to control our day-to-day existence.”

Christensen adds:

When the world is going badly, the reason is because people gave up. Things aren’t hopeless. We can absolutely fight back. Hopefully, this album gets people to think about valuing humanity over profit.