Machinery

Though not as good as their previous effort, 'Machinery' has a lot to offer. No Return remains one of the best (probably the best even) thrash metal acts from France to this day. Hell, they've been around since 1989 so they're pretty much old school boys, so give them space to experiment a little.

From the Jazzy chord intro progressing into a decent thrashing, the opening titletrack sets the mood for the entire album. A blend of early thrash metal and progessive death metal with an incidental blast speed drum and spacey keyboard details. The rhythmic intro to 'The Recycler' is pretty good and once again the song progesses into an uptempo thrasher. The riffs are classic late-eighties thrash metal here and Steeve's vocals - fortunately - aren't deep enough to consider them deathgrunts.

'Violator' opens blast speed death metalish but - once again - uptempo thrash metal takes over. One could say the album is quite monotome but the riffs are both fresh was well as old school. There's enough diversity in rhythm throughout the songs to keep everything interesting. 'Violator' is actually a perfect mixture of Kreator and (old) Fear Factory.

'Synthetic' is the first song which isn't mostly uptempo although it really speeds up from time to time. 'Disillusion' has a really catchy 'gothenburg' riff in the verses and the 6/8 pattern over a 1/2 beat does wonders here. My personal favorite song must be 'Virus' which has a real eerie yet powerful opening before plunging into some real old school thrash metal with a pounding double bass verse and an uptempo Fear Factory inspired chorus.

I could go on about all the songs. But I guess you know enough by now. This is a strong album if you're into modern industrial metal as well as old school thrash metal. Nothing wrong with this. p.s.: what happend to that cute girl Olivia who played bassguitar on their tour?