The album features a contrast of dark, gloomy, and sometimes aggressive songs such as "The Remedy" and "Blood" and more serene, upbeat tracks like "Start Over" and "Sunny Day."

Elements of industrial rock are evident in various ways; keyboard is used in light melody of the dark-lyric-themed "Ruin Your Life" as well as the raging chorus of "Fluorescein," and ambiguous, non-sung vocal recordings are featured in various tracks.

While Humanistic was released in September 2001, the majority of promotion took place from early to mid-2002; indeed, the album and its singles did not begin to chart until March 2002 and commonly peaked around May.

He went on to proclaim, "Humanistic is a fantastic album that could be considered a masterpiece of electro-pop... Walter has a gift for creating dense pop confections that manage to float like a feather even with all of their heaviness.

"[3] Often referring to the 31-year-old as a "kid," Thom Jurek of AllMusic described Walter as a "harder-rock version of Tommy Gnosis: vulnerable, lost, and wanting desperately to put it all into terms that are rock & roll enough to make him stand out from the crowd.