Machine Mafia – Killzones EP
Machine Mafia – Killzones EP
Self-Released
Release Date: 06/07/24
Running Time: 16:06
Review by Dark Juan
8/10
Good afternoon from the plague house that is Crow Cottage. You must forgive me because my chest feels like the Rotherham women’s shot-putting team is standing on it and I can barely move because of pain. However, I have done a test, and it appears that I haven’t got the Rona, which means that it’s yet another chest infection (only my fourth of the year so far, yay!) or that Mrs Dark Juan is trying to off me by trampling my chest when I am sleeping. Rory Bentley would no doubt approve…
Combine this with a 120-hour working week and the last two days of that having only had three hours sleep both nights and you will understand that Dark Juan is in a bit of a dark place, right now, and therefore he needs something deeply misanthropic and anti-establishment to listen to. Thankfully, the esteemed Platter of Splatter ™ has anticipated my requirements and has already started to play “Killzones”, a four track EP from the minds of Adam Stone of Pound Land and Jase Kester of OMNIBDGR. As you are all no doubt aware by now, Dark Juan regards Pound Land and OMNIBDGR/ Omnibadger/ Omnibael as two of the greatest British Industrial bands there have ever been. So, Stone and Kester have combined their talents (and their desire to make music that sounds like the catastrophic failure of load-bearing joints) for Machine Mafia.
The EP opens with the title track and already Dark Juan’s Socialist blood is boiling as the fuckers in Machine Mafia preface the actual music with Grantham’s very own Tory demon, Margaret the Milk Snatcher as she rails her debased Tory filth and lies before thankfully the boys drown her out with a laid back and relaxed pace – all snarling, fuzzy basslines and overdrive and chopped up, mangled sounds over a languorous, defeated vocal, all half-formed syllabification and barely literate moaning. Kind of like the generation of the kids in Tory run schools, unfortunately being the generation I was brought up in. And rather a lot of my year-mates are not the best and brightest and are stuck with fucking turkey teeth, overweight, can’t live beyond the countdown on their phones to their next week in the same fucking Spanish resort they have been going to for the past twenty years, looking at least a decade older than they should do and having fewer brains than what you may find in the window of a fucking butchers. The song also closes out with the scourge of common sense that was fucking Margaret “Many, Many Words I Have Been Encouraged To Edit Because We Don’t Want, As An Organisation, To Alienate Anyone As Ever-Metal Is Inclusive” Thatcher.
Dark Juan’s own personal view, however, is somewhat different, and he very much wishes to take a road trip to Grantham with a few pounds of plastic explosive and blow the fucking statue in memory of her disgusting Tory ways to fucking smithereens. And then I’ll go to Vienna and do the same to Adolf Hitler Platz. Seeing as they are two sides of the same coin.
Tories are scum. This is the personal point of view of Dark Juan so come at me if you have a problem.
Machine Mafia have totally riled me up now. I fucking despise Tories. Even though I am disturbingly attracted to Kemi Badenoch. And Penny Mordaunt. Oh god… I have a power kink, don’t I? I feel dirty…
‘Faces’ is the second piece on this four-track EP, and the beat sounds like they have sampled the Sisters Of Mercy and then trampled the mighty Eldritch and cohort under their work boots and recorded the resulting carnage and then overlaid it with crackling, fuzzy, poorly earthed bass guitar. The vocal on this song prowls and sneaks behind the music, occasionally coming to the fore to spit venom into the face of the listener before swaggering back into the background like they are cock of the fucking north.
‘I Am Not You’ follows on from the second track and this is a very lithium-dosed Nine Inch Nails-esque wander through the mental state of Jase Kester and Adam Stone. Slow, molasses-thick bass, oozes and flows behind vocals that remind Dark Juan of his own internal monologue when he is having a major depressive episode. If this is what they are like when they are sober, then I don’t think I’d like to meet them when they are drunk as they will not doubt be that laid back they would be fucking horizontal. This song sounds like the aftermath of a massive and emotional argument, where you can’t summon the emotional energy to fight anymore, but you are still fucking angry but you are totally drained and cannot be arsed with anyone or anything.
‘Lecture 0.3B’ closes out the EP and it is lots of samples of different people talking (including one gentleman who fucking LOVES caterpillars, and other man talking about coaching inns, and another bloke babbling about carpets, this before the jarring, incongruous, Techno-like female vocal stabs in and out of the body of the work) and it ebbs and flows over the sound of wind blowing across an icy tundra and clicking, subtle electronics. The words are all over the place in a tour de force of the banality of conversation between people of less than adequate intelligence – Babbling incoherently about Kinder Eggs and how they are a game changer… A game changer in what manner, though? Confectionery? Ease of illegal drug transport? Ruining the stranglehold of Cadbury’s? Being the person I am and the role in which I play in society, whereupon I know sooo many things I had no wish to but are necessary for my role, it is possible to shove several Kinder egg toy cases up the front bottom and actual bottom in order to facilitate the Bolivian marching powder being brought to your provincial town. Some people might even get off on snorting some Charlie that has been inside 18-year-old Tragedeigh of Slough’s lady garden. Anyway, British people in the eyes of Machine Mafia are bovine, stupid, of sub-optimal intelligence and are only useful as pack animals and can only be trained in simple, repetitive tasks. Their conversations are as interesting as being the subject of a rectal examination and about as pleasurable too. Unless you are a certain kind of person, but that’s by the by, their lives controlled by tedious routine that they are stupid to wish to break out of, risk-averse, thicker than mince and ugly and unbecoming. And you know what? Machine Mafia are fucking right. Look at the grey and beige out there and tell Dark Juan that this is a country of bounty and satisfaction, where leisure and enjoyment are affordable and abundant. Then Machine Mafia and Dark Juan will call you a fucking liar and point out the endless wage slavery, the ever increasing cost of basic items and utilities and the simple fact that IT COULD ALL BE EASILY FUCKING SOLVED BUT THERE IS NOT PROFIT IN IT IF IT IS FIXED.
This is what Machine Mafia makes Dark Juan think like. They foment rage inside my breast and make me want to finish what Guy Fawkes started. They remind me that I am a radical, a republican (not in the manner of the American dickhead political party, I mean a rabid anti-Monarchist), Antifascist and fundamentally a decent person who cares about his fellow man. And that means I should fight. However, Labour won the recent general election, so they have robbed me of several hundred words of Tory-bashing.
Never mind.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Machine Mafia 8/10. Mainly because it looks like nepotism if I award this pair of miscreants 10/10 again. Seriously, my usual caveat that it is not really Metal applies, as does the fact that the audience for the music of Machine Mafia is going to be the people who like Pound Land and OMNIBDGR and they operate very much in that musical spectrum. To Dark Juan, though, that’s not really a demerit as far as Dark Juan is concerned as Dark Juan is a person who likes Pound Land and OMNIBDGR.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Killzones
02. Faces
03. I Am Not You
04. Lecture 03.B
LINE-UP:
Jase Kester and Adam Stone – Howling, screaming, smashing of redundant electronic devices, revolution, everything from child’s toy piano to theremin, chucking people down steel stairs. Oh and bass.
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.