Artist: Machinae Supremacy
Title: The Beat of Our Decay
Type: Compilation CD
Label: Spinefarm

Just the other day I was thinking of a phrase a friend of mine had come out with during a session of nostalgia, namely “I remember when metal was just metal, punk was just punk, and anything else was shit.” This particularly deep philosophical musing was in reaction to the myriad sub-genres that proliferate through the music we both love so much, and the difficulty in trying to keep up. As such, you can guess just how excited I was to receive Machinae Supremacy’s compilation album, ‘The Beat of Our Decay’, the band defining themselves as “SID-metal”. In a quest for understanding I dutifully did my research and discovered that this is due to the use of a “SID chip” in creating their sound, namely the Sound Interface Device from a Commodore 64, an early 64K home computer that I remember the rich kids having when I was approaching my teens back in the early 80s. Okay, now I know what the band think of themselves, time for me to listen to their music and make up my own mind.

Album opener ‘Through The Looking Glass’ pretty much sets the tone for the whole album, nothing too heavy, clean vocals, mid paced competently played guitars, and plenty of double kick drum beats. What that band is doing to try and set themselves apart from so many other similar bands is the use of that said SID chip, with assorted tweets and chirps reminiscent of early 80’s computer games threaded through their songs. ‘Rogue World Asylum’ starts with the sort of 8 bit electronic riff that accompanied Jet Set Willy through his 8 bit adventures back in the day, and by the time ‘Oki Kumas Adventure’ comes out of the speakers, a track that with a name that even sounds like a retro Nintendo game, the beeps and whirs become positively intrusive.

Song after song came out the same, the band seeming to have pretty much one pace and one sound, making a 16 track CD that is a compilation of their 3 prior self-released albums a bit of a slog, especially with a running time that comes in well over 70 minutes. The one new song that rounds off the collection is a cover of Lady Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’, which just felt like a light weight take on Marilyn Manson’s reimaginings of assorted pop hits. That Machinae Supremacy are trying to do something to stand out from the crowd is commendable, but to me, the whole album just lacked so much as a single hook to grab me. Hey, maybe I’m getting old, but I do long for the days when metal was just metal, punk was just punk, and anything else was shit.

http://machinaesupremacy.com

Spenny Bullen

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