Machinery

No Return is a french band playing thrashy gothenburg metal these days. Machiner is their sixth album and supposedly they were more thrash before but this certainly isn't. There are some thrashy parts in their music but mostly it is quite modern sonuding gothenburg with some electronic music influences.

As with most gothenburg bands today, No Return's lacks punch. It is glossily produced, very streamlined music but it still lacks the punch of At The Gates or Eucharist. The album has nothing that would separate it from the loads of other bands that play music like this these days. The vocalist sounds like lots of other half-assed gothenburg grunters, the riffs are very bland and the drummer doesn't even know how to play proper fills (or at least that's how it sounds). The only thing really of their own is the keyboardists futuristic leads every now and then but they're so scarcely and uncreatively used that they don't give any extra merit.

Only one song rises above the clump and that is Synthetic with its more prominent keyboarding and slower pace. It is nothing very exciting but on this album it sounds like a masterpiece. Even the cover of Secret Face is ruined by the awful production. The bottom line is this record is unnecessary, boring and uninspired. There is nothing of worth here. If you want futuristic sounding extreme metal, get Nocturnus - The Key or some Oxiplegatz.

(Originally published in Tuonela webzine (c) 2002)