Expect chaos from Love Sex Machine.
After eight years without a release, the band made up of Laurent (bass), Yves (guitar/vocals), Xavier (drums) and JB (guitar/vocals) joins Pelagic Records for the release of TRVE, their third album.
The band kicks things off with Fucking Snakes, featuring their abrasive oppressive sound coupled with muffled vociferations, as well as a few more raw Hardcore-influenced passages beneath the ambient chaos. The composition cuts off abruptly to make way for Test26 and its heady keyboards, which join the thick heady basis which even gets heavier with some heartfelt palm-mutes as vocals rage in the background, before finally fading out to Trapped For Life and its haunting melodies that slightly soften the permanent aural venom. Body Probe adopts a relatively similar approach, with dissonant harmonics haunting the musicians’ slow ponderous bass-driven basis but the track is quite short, and Canopy quickly follows to feed this thick dark cloud, which nonetheless offers a few more majestic passages. The ominous sounds are revived on Broken Code which adopts irregular patterns to support its suffocating atmosphere, unlike Carbonic Beast which sounds much more accessible and almost playful at first. The band will obviously make the whole thing as strange and unhealthy as possible thanks to its very regular flow, then it’s with Autism Factor that they bring a heterogeneous mix of melancholy and unconcealed ferocity, making the composition truly singular. We continue with Hollywood Story, which adopts relatively mellow tones that are ultimately very motivating under the saturated veil that gradually slows down, then the album comes to an end with 10 MASK, where the band doesn’t give up its soaring touches under the invading curtain of darkness that insinuates itself into the furthest recesses of our minds thanks to its pessimistic direction.
It’s impossible not to get caught up in Love Sex Machine’s saturation. Somewhere between Sludge, Post-Metal and heavy tones, TRVE will find its audience among fans of a thick dissonant sound, all the while respecting a certain permanent (im)purity.
80/100
