MASTER BOOT RECORD – Hardwarez
MASTER BOOT RECORD – Hardwarez
Metal Blade Records
Release Date: 11/10/2024
Running Time: 40:39
Review by Dark Juan
10/10
It is a cold afternoon in the Calder Valley in Yorkshire. I am seated at my pooter and contemplating changing my hoodie for my oodie, which is the closest Dark Juan can get to returning to the womb as it is quite the warmest garment I have ever possessed. Of course, it is black, because my wardrobe doesn’t have any other colour in it and black is slimming because Dark Juan is a portly bastard these days. I can’t put on the heating because I am Northern, and it is not yet December. It’s not even big coat weather yet!
I have once more foolishly been left unattended. Therefore, because I am off the booze because of ill health, I am downing Lucozade like there’s no tomorrow and I have actually taken time off work at Mrs Dark Juan’s instruction (well, demand) and I am therefore at something of a loose end. There’s only so many crappy YouTube documentaries a man can watch, and I am not normally interested in such passive forms of entertainment anyway, so it is time to drag the Platter of Splatter ™ from its lair and make it play unspeakable horrors.
This time, we have returned to the Electronic Metal of Italian madman Victor Love and MASTER BOOT RECORD. Dark Juan fucking adores MASTER BOOT RECORD and has no shame in admitting this because the music is fresh and exciting and has more soul than a lot of the run of the mill, identikit Metal out there. It is truly unique, and together with Love’s other project, Keygen Church, it represents a massive deviation from the norm which is as intoxicating as it is shocking. What is even more shocking is that this represents the FIFTEENTH MASTER BOOT RECORD album, if we aren’t counting the VirtuaVerse soundtrack and the Keygen Church releases – all of this done in just a few years, which represents a workrate that is frankly terrifying and just shows the laser focus of Love as an artist.
I have succumbed and put on my oodie. Just for your information, you understand.
So, I heard absolutely no one ask, what is different about this MASTER BOOT RECORD album than the plethora that have gone before?
Allow me to enlighten you. For this album, Love live streamed his desktop on YouTube whilst composing new music and everything is programmed via MIDI. But there is an even more esoteric, fundamental change, and that is the incorporation of live guitar work courtesy of live guitarist Shreddy, who plays along with the synth guitar and adds palm-muted riffing and fluid soloing to the already expansive film-soundtrack-worthy sound of MBR. This adds a whole new level of heaviness and a surprisingly human element to the music.
Full disclosure: Dark Juan was trepidacious about having actual guitar on the record as he could see how it would work in the live setting, but the albums are pure things that didn’t need embellishment. However, my mind has been changed by “Hardwarez” as the guitar adds an incredible new dimension of musicality and interest to music that, if you aren’t a dedicated and confirmed fan such as I, could be seen to be repetitive. It isn’t anyway, but that has been a criticism levelled at the band by other people of my acquaintance. I mean ‘FDD’ even has an Eastern sounding segment, which is not something I have come across on a MASTER BOOT RECORD release before.
As usual the music conjures up images of car chases and submachine guns, or huge star battles between fleets of massive and heavily armed warships, or plucky programmers fighting the Master Control Program on the game grid, riding light cycles and whanging discuses at each other. The music of MDB is a neon-tinged nightmare where lights and bright colours disguise hunting vampires and razorgirl assassins with surgically implanted, retractable blades beneath exquisitely painted fingernails in dripping, rubbish-choked back alleys where the light never penetrates. Except this time there’s a real rage against the light and a feeling that the back-alley denizens are going to emerge, blinking and confused, before they launch themselves at the crowds of thrillseekers and people going about their business teeth first, and there will ensue an orgy of the most horrendous, blood-splattered violence; murder en masse played out beneath grinning geisha girls with scarlet lips and bone-white faces advertising all manner of perversions, genetic tinkering or fast food on storey-high holographic billboards, the sound of terrorised multitudes screaming eventually overcoming music and road noise and the roaring of air-conditioning systems as they race and trample each other as they try to escape…
Sorry. My imagination gets the better of me sometimes. MASTER BOOT RECORD play the music of the seedier side of Shinjuku and the kind of future that William Gibson wrote about, but with added Gothic drama, as if Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool inhabited a castle teetering to its fall in some desolate part of Transylvania rather than a space station in orbit.
And that’s where we shall leave this review – if you are a fan of MASTER BOOT RECORD and can suspend your distrust of actual guitar being used on “Hardwarez” then you are going to love this fucking album. If you are just getting into the unique sound of MBR, then this is a superb starting point to start your journey. If you are a fan of Metal who has discounted MBR as a fad or not in fact Metal, you are a) a gatekeeping dickhead or b) closed minded and not willing to see Metal expand beyond its own narrow borders. You could be option c) willing to try something new, and be quite pleasantly surprised by the Electronic Metal on display here. It is heavier and more focused than a lot of the actual Metal out there and for that reason I am instructing the Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Il sistema brevettato di classificazione degli schizzi di sangue di Dark Juan, per i miei amici italiani. Anche se, a dire il vero, sono fottutamente terrorizzato da voi adesso. Non solo MASTER BOOT RECORD, ma anche arottenbit! Qualcuno potrebbe spiegare perché l’Italia sta producendo un tale terrore sonoro? Voglio dire, hai birra decente, vino decente, buon cibo e un bel paese, donne molto belle e bei gentiluomini. Cos’altro ti serve? Perchè il terrorismo sonico?) to award 10/10 for yet another triumph from Victor Love.
TRACKLISTING:
01. BIOS
02. MOBO
03. CPU
04. GPU
05. RAM
06. FDD
07. HDD
08. PSU
09. CASE
LINE-UP:
Victor Love – All electronics
Shreddy – Live guitars
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.
