Things change. They always do. Even bands and the music they make change and evolve. Sometimes the change is for the worst and sometimes for the better. Sometimes they change and are just different. With their latest album, “Box of Horrors“, Man.Machine.Industry continues to evolve.
Hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, and never really having much US airplay, I accidentally ran across MMI one evening back in 2011 while looking into other bands. In fact, their album “White Trash Devil In a Jesus Christ Pose” was the first review we ever posted. I’ve been following the band since. Starting off with pretty solid Industrial roots, Man.Machine.Industry has evolved quite a bit over the years.
Their 2001 album “Mention” lays on the Industrial thick, similar in style I would say to Misery Loves Co. Heavy doses of Industrial still pound away with their “White Trash Devil…” album but Bergman and crew start throwing thrash into the mix. After another album (“Lean Back, Relax and Watch The World Burn) and EP (“The Cross”) later, we come to their latest effort “Box Of Horrors”.
“Box of Horrors” continues on similar in sound to “Lean Back, Relax…” It has the MMI heaviness, with their screaming guitars, pounding drums and gravely vocals. This time around though the MMI thrash sound is far more prevalent. Choosing to speed things up especially on such tracks as “Let It Burn” and “(God of Mass Distortion) Trend Killer”. They even slow things down (a lot) though on the final track “Heading for Nowhere”.
As usual the sound, mixing and production quality of the album is superb. It’s evident that J. Bergman and crew have music as their passion and won’t put out anything other than a solid product. This is especially great since Bergman pretty much runs everything from writing, recording, to production to video producer…he does it all and does it well.
Maybe they’re getting old. Maybe they’re getting bored. Maybe they’re growing as musicians. That Industrial sound of MMI is changing and evolving, but it’s still heading in the right, heavy [metal] direction.