Glitch Black - Mechanical Perfection | A Review
Glitch Black gifts us an intensely gritty album slammed with relentless dark electronica; creating 10 songs of mood making maelstroms. There is something terrifying in the simple conceptualisation of a “Mechanical Perfection”, it is efficiently devoid of a humanity and this whole album immerses me in that silver grey world. Weaving in classic sci-fi tropes of A.I dominance and apocalyptic fallout, Glitch Black has created a cinematically dark mood conjuring up mind-movies of car chases, machine battles and epic neon drenched vistas of a post apocalyptic world.
The first song Onslaught hits like a shotgun, it's frenetic and breathless and at one point It felt like Glitch Black liquefied Metallica’s Justice For All album and wore it as war paint! This is the track that sets the tone.
Binary Overlord gives us the cold steel of the machine with its swelling horror, echoed within those beautiful trance stabs. An oscillating whirlpool of malevolence is how I felt about this song.
And The Grit hits, and you slow to a stomping, lumbering Bass that glitters into a haunting trance saw. It’s the kind of beat where you hold up one stick high between each bass and snare.
Suddenly I’m in a strobe lit crowd, obscured by smoke and lasers because now Glitch Black is playing song 4 ‘Dark Future’ on his throne of sounds. A sure fire banger for the dance floor inclined, this will be played when live shows return, I can guarantee you that.
Shock Troopers continues the pace but with a sweet descending breakdown into the outro and I’m wishing it wouldn’t stop.
The next song again slows the bpm’s briefly coalescing into those dramatically pronounced snare snaps before Cataclysm bursts through the pause with some beautiful arpeggiated trance patterns. I’m feeling the thematic dynamic here between those bit-crushed metallic tones and the emotionally driven synths.
Proxy War’s intro briefly took me out of that synth induced thousand mile stare only to throw me back in, reaffirming Mechanical Perfections wonderful ability to hijack your attention especially in its third act.
Again, this industrial trance thing Glitch Black has going on would no doubt trigger ecstasy fueled late 90’s flashbacks! But Blood and Rust has a conflict battling within and it’s a complex song of peaks and troughs, back and forth and I’m not sure who is going to triumph.
The penultimate track is frantic, pensive, and epic, I think we have hit the lair of the machine brain here. The title track, Mechanical Perfection feels a little on the short end but a nice entry before the finish.
Mechanical Perfection comes to a close with Deleted Memories, a more subtle exit track, with searching organs over the now familiar chemistry of sounds that rounds out a journey I’m not sure has ended.
Mechanical Perfection, like many albums in the genre, is an instrumental voyage that is done right and one of Glitch Blacks best work. The wavelength topography alone will tell you that it’s not all repetitive industrial phrasing with reciprocating synths, it’s more like a vinyl tapestry of storytelling. The tempo changes and breakdowns are plentiful but Glitch Black keeps within the walls of his sandbox, at times conservative in his sounds but its so brilliantly woven together that it makes for a hollow criticism.
I need to listen to this album being played live because you can tell the production is magnificent and Glitch Blacks latest album, especially for fans of the genre needs to be felt in a live world venue!
Favourite track: Dark Future
Least Favourite: N/A
Score: 8/10
Mechanical Perfection is available now on Bandcamp for $1.00 USD. The combo pack is $8.00 includes a digital copy of the all-new 2020 album Mechanical Perfection, a Glitch Black logo enamel pin (glows in the dark!), and 4 Glitch Black stickers!
Includes unlimited streaming of Mechanical Perfection via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
https://glitchblack.bandcamp.com/album/mechanical-perfection