Greymachine

Disconnected (2009)

wallofyouth

From what I can gather, Greymachine's debut, Disconnected is not getting the greatest response out there in musicland. The biggest and, I suppose, most valid point of criticism I see it receiving, is that it's not very dynamic, especially considering the prestige and wealth of talent possessed by the project's members (Justin Broadrick of Jesu, Godflesh and Napalm Death, and Aaron Turner of Isis are the marquee names here). "It just kind of drones along for about an hour," to paraphrase the reviews I've seen.

I must argue that for a record called Disconnected by a band called Greymachine, dynamism wasn't necessarily the goal here. What we do have, instead, is exactly what's been promised. These songs certainly drone. At times, they crawl. And they are most certainly full of distortion and noise.

Each song, however, has a very present sense of "groove" relentlessly pushing it forward. Paired with the spare and desolate artwork, this plays like pop music for zombies of the apocalypse. It seriously wouldn't take too much of a culture shift to hear this being played for a warehouse full of sallow humanoids slowly swaying to this endless pulsing beat. If I played "Vultures Descend" for my grandma right after "Toxic" by Britney Spears, she wouldn't be able to tell you the difference.

In the end, the root of your enjoyment of this will hinge on whether or not you are okay with a story that has no real beginning or end. Buried under the distortion, there's a lumbering behemoth, a greymachine. Its destination is not important--these songs are indeed cycling toward nothing.

It's a circular narrative in many ways where it kind of sums up the human race in a time capsule.