Death Machine - Death Machine
2003 - Sensory Dark Records
By Philip Whitehouse
Go to the Death Machine website.
Featuring the Tipton brothers of Zero Hour fame on guitar and bass duties, Death Machine take the prog-metal foundations of that band and put them thrugh a wringer of Devin Townsend, Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah influences to create a dark, sprawling, industrial-prog-death album with occasional hints of Mudvayne-esque commerciality. If that sounds like a complex description, you should hear the songs - brief mid-album instrumental 'Schmeg' utilises guitar and bass to create an insanely fast spiralling solo vortex, whilst album highlight 'Last Breath' features a jazz-fusion break which showcases some stunning bass fretwork. The album closes with a gentle, melodious piano composition, backed up by a lilting and gorgeous acoustic guitar solo and faint, plaintive female vocals in the background.
Between all of these flashes of sheer brilliance, however, are the more questionable, 'regular' Death Machine tracks - stomping, heavy, growling metal songs all, but the relatively simplistic Fear Factory-esque riffage and drumming coupled with the love-them-or-hate-them strangled growls put forth by Throat sometimes feel rather uninspired, passages to be waited out until the excellent prog or noisecore sections roll around again.
If you can deal with that incongruity, you'll find Death Machine a satisfyingly heavy record.
7/10
2003 - Sensory Dark Records
By Philip Whitehouse
Go to the Death Machine website.
Featuring the Tipton brothers of Zero Hour fame on guitar and bass duties, Death Machine take the prog-metal foundations of that band and put them thrugh a wringer of Devin Townsend, Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah influences to create a dark, sprawling, industrial-prog-death album with occasional hints of Mudvayne-esque commerciality. If that sounds like a complex description, you should hear the songs - brief mid-album instrumental 'Schmeg' utilises guitar and bass to create an insanely fast spiralling solo vortex, whilst album highlight 'Last Breath' features a jazz-fusion break which showcases some stunning bass fretwork. The album closes with a gentle, melodious piano composition, backed up by a lilting and gorgeous acoustic guitar solo and faint, plaintive female vocals in the background.
Between all of these flashes of sheer brilliance, however, are the more questionable, 'regular' Death Machine tracks - stomping, heavy, growling metal songs all, but the relatively simplistic Fear Factory-esque riffage and drumming coupled with the love-them-or-hate-them strangled growls put forth by Throat sometimes feel rather uninspired, passages to be waited out until the excellent prog or noisecore sections roll around again.
If you can deal with that incongruity, you'll find Death Machine a satisfyingly heavy record.
7/10
