Review: Machine God – Volume 2
Dos Ex Machina
(This review was written by Falxifer)
Industrial music has had a very interesting relationship with metal and their respective developments are surprisingly linked, i.e. both spawning from British steel cities in the 70’s and being tied with counter-culture, but I digress. What we have here is the newest EP and sophomore release by French project Machine God. In the words of sole member and sound engineer, Angus Schieber, Machine God plays an amalgam of industrial, noise, and doom, with an eclectic mix of influences which includes black and death metal.
The EP opens with “The Butcher’s Nails – Angron’s Rage”, an under-5-minutes crushing song that truly evokes the treble and distortion of old school death metal a la Entombed and Dismember. But unlike those bands, the music is purely instrumental, and the ending coda has very interesting noise soundscapes.
However, the EP’s main focus is not entirely on metal, in fact only the aforementioned “The Butcher’s Nails” and “The Skinning Pit – Konrad’s Madness” can be comfortably described as metal, the rest of the EP is very much industrial noise and dark ambient, with the metal tracks serving as breaks, and while that may dissuade certain people, on a purely technical sense, this is a very well crafted EP and the performance of Schieber is admirable.
The industrial tracks are really the major highlight of the EP, especially the closing track “The
Sea Of Souls – Magnus’ Hubris”, which is an intense dirge-like soundscape that’s very cinematic and foreboding, with insistent synths creating an atmosphere of darkness and discomfort, which really matches the cover art of a lone ship entering a looming nebula in the distance. And it is this atmosphere what makes the EP a cohesive whole. All the music is tied to its concept which is Warhammer 40k based and this EP is a fitting soundtrack for that game, not unlike the late great Bolt Thrower.
Getting into the nitty gritty, the use of analog synths is very much noticeable, and the sounds Schieber created here are appropriately timeless sounding, which then paired with the old school death metal riffs and esoteric soundscapes of the later tracks and all the music would neatly fit into the world of Warhammer like a glove. My only critique of the music is how jarring the switch from distorted death metal crunch to harsh synths and sampled noise in tracks 1 and 2 felt on my first listen, but the 3rd track really bridges the gap and serves as the sonic Rosetta Stone of the whole album.
Overall, this EP is a neat little curio, and while it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it is an interesting display of genre bending and pushing, and it piqued my interest to want to see what Schieber can do whenever he commits to doing a full-length.
Machine God’s Volume 2 receives a
3 out of 5 Toilets Ov Hell
Machine God’s Volume 2 is out on December 6th via True Cult Records.
