Realize – Machine Violence

By RingMaster Review on October 13, 2020 • ( 0 )

Every now and then we step back in time to when industrial metal truly devoured and obliterated our faculties with its intensity and barbarous creativity; the likes of Ministry, Prong, Godflesh, The Young Gods and Author & Punisher in their individual ways at the fore of the raw blistering senses needed days to recover from. As the genre has evolved arguably few since have matched the infernal presence and trespasses of its early protagonists but there is Realise, one creative intrusion which not only echoes the triumphantly crushing dissonance in sound and intention from days past but has taken it to a whole fresh and debilitating level.

The Arizona hailing outfit have just unleashed their sophomore album Machine Violence, an assault which had us reeling in insecurity and pleasure, the senses lingeringly numbed from its sonically macerating assail and body sore from the intensity of its corrosive intensity. Consisting of Kyle Kennedy (Sex Prisoner), Matt Underwood (Sex Prisoner) and Matt Mutterperl (North and Languish), Realize invade and spark the deepest fears and anxieties within through the intimidation and threat of Machine Violence, the assault of its ravenous tempest an echo of the themes within and isolating the listener and imagination in its suffocating presence. Even so as album opener Alone Against Flames proves, it is a violence of sound and discord of emotional devouring which is addictively virulent. Like the viral pandemic feasting on the world it takes no prisoners and bares no mercy yet embroils them in predacious grooves and flails them through heinous industrial rhythms which incited only enslavement.

With vocals sharing little other than sound matching antipathy and extremity the track is an absorbing and punishing start to the release, one only intensified and eclipsed by the following Melted Base. The initial swing of beats and the grievous breath of bass make for an inviting lure though it is soon immersed in a tide of sonic severity. Again it is a viciously contagious affair, every savage infestation nurtured with infernal catchiness and each infectious enticement courted by skilled brutality.

Ghost in The Void crushes the senses underfoot as it lumbers in, vocals a caustic protagonist in its midst as riffs overwhelmed swiftly welcoming attention and appetite. Once more it is a claustrophobic experience as the senses are submerged in the song’s demonic and increasingly enervating acrimony, each track rising from a similar seeding within the album but especially fearsome here as it sears flesh and sanity alike before Long Stare takes its demons and gives them reign in its incapacitating but destructively individual hell.

The addiction bred for the release only escalated as the likes of Hypermech and Disappear uncaged their creative vehemence. The first is an unforgiving asphyxiation of the senses, every breath and esurient note bestowed as crippling as they are captivating with its successor stalking and hunting down the senses before feeding them to a nest of sonic hornets within another wall of ravenous riffs. Equally the electronic bred rhythms within both and the album as a whole spring spite and venom with manipulative prowess, the bass greedily devouring all trapped in their coaxing with next up Simulated World Down relishing that organic union. Fair to say though there is nothing in particular which was more major in earning our lustful submission than anything else, every aspect of Machine Violence instrumental in our wolfish consuming of one of the year’s finest incursions.

As the outstanding Slag Pile pulverised and deformed body and senses alike and Gateway Trial encased the bruising earned with its own stressful but invigorating pressure, Machine Violence continued to intensify its creative appropriation of neurosis and pleasure with the closing Heavy Legs in The Mansion a melodic caress which rather than being comforting only augmented the anxiety of the former and grin of the latter.

Machine Violence is an album which will leave you shaking in exhaustion and deep discomfort or sheer pleasure; in fact as we found it just might be both as Realize brings all the anxieties and darkness in the world and in the lives within to glorious realisation.

Machine Violence is out now via Relapse Records; available @ https://realizeindustrial.bandcamp.com/album/machine-violence