Internet Protocol

I gotta admit I'd actually been expecting something more glitchy-electronic, teeth-clattering noisy and sledgehammer-pounding from this Italian act, headed by one Victor Love who claims all the music is generated, shaped into definite melodies and compositions, and played by computer. The range of sounds featured don't strike me as very original or even very computer-like; so many of the melodies sound like a crazed organ or analog synthesiser with pretensions to ruling and running the entire planet (including all its ecosystems right down to the last earthworm or maggot) single-handedly like a bureaucratic God. The music is buoyed and bounced along by infernal grinding heavy industrial guitars and thrashing synth percussion ratcheted up to relentless several hundreds of beats per minute. The overall effect is of a constant demented harpsichord on the lam from a music conservatorium asylum, in company with a band of monster industrial metal guitars and demonic synth drum-kit, all of them churning up the roads ahead of them and leaving trails of broken asphalt slabs and burning sulfurous fires behind.

"Internet Protocol" is not so much a collection of seven tracks as it is a soundtrack to what could be several linked videogames - the music might pause for the tiniest of breaks between tracks but within those tracks it's going hell-4-leather with chunky stuttering rhythms and slam-hard beats while the synths are all over them with prattling melodies. There is hardly any room for atmosphere or slowing down between slabs of rhythm aggression and runaway twiddly keyboard tickling, so in spite of all the full-on pounding density, the music sometimes comes across as flat and cold. But I suppose that's to be expected, if all this flood is the work of a computer gone completely bonkers insane.

The music is very tight and dense, and with all its galloping melodic ups and downs it has the fluid nature of a set of carriages going full tilt with no end on a roller-coaster. While individual tracks have their own melodic charms when heard separately, they all tend to sound much alike when heard together due to the limited range of instrumentation used and the lack of atmosphere and emotion. At least MBR's enthusiasm, passion and cheeky sense of humour pour out of most tracks (especially the last three tracks, where there's much drama and bombast) on the album. "Internet Protocol" is not such an emotionless machine entity after all.