Review Summary: Moon Machine gets Down-to-Earth.
The first band I ever saw live was
Dream Theater at 14. As a young student of music theory, my favorite work of theirs was their carefully crafted "Octavarium". As someone suffering from an untreated anxiety disorder, ‘Panic Attack’ particularly spoke to me on a deep level. My entry into the progressive metal world began earlier with
Metallica’s "...And Justice for All" – the doors blew open to show me a style of music that was simultaneously brutal, epic, orchestral, boundary-pushing, and whose instrumentation matched the lyrical content in portraying the harsh Lacanian Real (drugs, war, corruption, mental illness, etc.) everyday life wants to veil.
That night,
Dream Theater put on a forgettable snooze-fest and the headliner,
Iron Maiden, was just plain fun to see and hear without all the technical wankery. Aside from a few artists with notoriety that use the progressive label to infuse a profound transparency, outside influences, out-of-the-ordinary instruments, otherworldly sounds, and unique song structures into their art, the bulwark of progressive metal hasn’t advanced in ages.
Dream Theater are doing the exact same thing they’ve done for 30 years but with goofy album art that looks straight out of a bootleg Pixar film.
Tool fans are still goo goo gaga over the Fibonacci Sequence. The vanguard of façade-laden progressive death metal consisting of the likes of
Ulcerate,
Gorguts, and
Ad Nauseam bores me to tears. According to
Devin Townsend Project, Dev teases his contemporaries on his track ‘Planet of the Apes’, “We all rip off Meshuggah!” Progressive metal has not done anything to catch much of my attention the past decade.
Enter Boston’s
Moon Machine. Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Eric Hochwald took somewhat of an auteur approach to producing their self-titled debut along with bandmates Jon Sirota and Angel Castillo, recording and producing the album independently. Following the release of singles ‘Left to Wander’, ‘Reckoning’, and ‘Demon:05’, "Moon Machine" dropped on July 30 on Bailey Road Records.
While self-producing any record is an admirable feat, the sonic qualities of the record do suffer as a result. The production is crisp, and you can hear every note, but it is overall on the quieter side – not quite as hard-hitting as I prefer my metal – and the main instruments can find themselves overtaken by the piano prominently featured throughout the album. The vocals sit about 90% right in the mix but with a mildly amateur-ish quality. Getting deep into the record, these complaints matter less and less as the songwriting impresses from front to back. With 7 epic rollercoaster-ride tracks and 43 minutes of runtime, there is little filler here to keep any metalhead bored.
Opener ‘The Cave’ starts the listener off with a mid-tempo groove and lush guitar chords which are married with some infectious synth arpeggios on the repeat of the phrase. The clean verses are elegantly wistful with lyrics longing for an escape from whatever mental or environmental hell he is trapped in. The theme of mental health is prominent here and throughout the rest of the album (all Bandcamp sales of the album are being donated to Mental Health America). Anybody who has had to wrestle with the psychiatric apparatus in the United States should be familiar with the agony of trying different medications, wrestling with professionals who themselves are clearly unwell (“The doctor is the patient”), and weeks wasted waiting for proper treatment due to bureaucratic nonsense. ‘The Cave’ leaves us off from the first section with another noodling synth solo, before transitioning into the last leg of the song which crescendos from bare piano and echoed vocals back into the metallic instrumentation and sky-high vocal harmonies.
‘Reckoning’ is a heavier track that invites you in with a distorted bass rumbling underneath dark synth chords and tom-heavy drumming. The verses kick in with this formula, along with some heavy guitar riffing and singing from Hochwald. Hochwald’s singing is inconsistent throughout the record, and this track is not his strongest performance – he sometimes sounds like he’s just hitting the notes with little conviction behind what he’s saying, although the lyrics themselves are dripping with wrath towards the sadistic, jingoistic subject(s) of the song. The chorus harks to
Opeth with three-note riffing up harmonic minor scales and orchestral accompaniment. The middle of the track takes us into calmer waters with a fancy trumpet solo, acoustic guitar, and a key change, before crescendoing again back into the heavier instrumentation and a smooth transition back to the original key and the final chorus.
"Blackwater Park" and "Ghost Reveries"-era
Opeth influence can be heard all over this record, something they clearly wear on their sleeve in an effort not to reinvent the wheel, but as a tribute to the greats of the genre and to make some original headbangers. One of the most unique tracks here is ‘Demon:05’, misleading us with a soft, almost lounge-y piano and clean guitar before it takes a dissonant turn into the creeping, tense verses. I take this track to be a musing on insomnia, and the demonic presence our left brains can curse us with by keeping up into the ungodly hours of the night ruminating over anything that will make us do so. A 5/4 beat lasts the entire 8-minutes as the band plays with different grooves around the time signature. The tension built throughout the track climaxes towards a sludgy breakdown and a long, agonized scream.
The ballad-like ‘Left to Wander’ reminds me of
Devin Townsend’s 2000s solo work, with a pacing reminiscent somewhat of Dev’s ‘Deadhead’. The lyrics and vocals carry the longing qualities of the opener, helplessly yearning for greener pastures. A passionate guitar solo midway divides us between the clean verse-heavy chorus of the first half, into a clean bridge adorned with piano, distant chants, softly layered vocal harmonies, strings, before entering once again into a final chorus.
The 15-minute epic ‘Post-Upgrade’ is split into three tracks to cap off the record. We begin with ‘I – Discovery’ which entices us with echoey sci-fi noises before a creeping, tiptoeing bassline sets the stage for what’s to come – reminding me just a bit of the intro to
Cryptopsy’s ‘Phobophile’ – followed by tom drums, choir-like vocals, and sustained electric guitar. ‘II – Grief’ wastes no time going full-throttle with interplaying guitar leads and piano, interrupted by heavy riffing and frustrated singing. This is a complex piece rife with tapping guitar solos, dark piano interludes, funky bridges dealing with themes of growth and acceptance, and massive double bass-backed riffs clearly influenced by
Opeth’s darker, death metal songs. ‘III – Requiem’ delivers some long-deserved peace with classical guitar arpeggios, adorned with heavenly flutes, cellos, and church-like organs and choir sounds. Following a minute of silence, malfunctioning alarms and futuristic blips rise in urgency and clash together into one big meltdown to cap off the runtime.
Two more things I love about the record – the band sounds like they are having fun playing and it feels infectious. There isn’t a dull moment to be had and careful attention was clearly placed in the intricately layered writing. The aesthetic presented here also feels very relevant. In an age where billionaires are blasting off to space to leave us mere mortals to suffer from climate disaster and the anthill of wage slavery, AI advancements are aimed at surveilling the public and replacing workers rather than easing our lives, and our cell phones seemingly track our every thought, the marvelous technology of today coexists with the deteriorating collective mental health and ability to reason with each other and the impending doom of tomorrow, leaving us isolated and helpless – which Hochwald tackles and portrays poetically.
Moon Machine shows tremendous promise with their debut and contains plenty of memorable riffs, vocal lines, honest lyricism, eclectic sounds, and unbounded song structure to breathe some life into a stagnant progressive metal scene. The so-so production holds back this record’s potential as a 2021 heavyweight, as well as the derivative
Opeth riffs and Hochwald’s up-and-down vocal performances. I am eager to hear more from the trio as they look to top their own experimental feats into something that is wholly their own. This absolutely deserves a spin from metalheads looking for something energetic and real, especially fans of progressive and classically influenced metal. More progressive metal bands should take note – take your self-important heads out of the clouds and have some fun making music.
