Reflex Machine Belt Out Bombastic New Sounds

I’ve just returned from Canton, Ohio where I spent two days checking out over 30 bands and I can testify that REFLEX MACHINE is the cat’s pajamas! Ground-shakingly heavy, rebellious, and little bit off kilter, it’s the kind of barely-controlled chaos that makes stoner-sludge such a compelling medium.

As the Columbus duo readies for the release of ‘Interzone’ (2019) on September 6th, Doomed & Stoned is pleased to premiere of the music video for “Faulty Apparatus.” A nihilistic commentary on our post-truth world, the song asks:

Where am I, what happened?
Life’s a lie, what is next?
I am lost, what is real?
Aside I’m tossed, but I will win.

The vid pokes fun at the way technology has disconnected us all from the reality around us – including the way everyone seems to want to experience shows (when they do go out), from the tiny window of their smartphones and tablets. And how many of us, by the way, actually go back and watch the scrappy footage we picked up that night? I’d bet 1 out of 10, if that. It seems more of a way to want to capture the moment, not realizing that our memories work exponentially better.

If you dig the song, you can pick up the single (and pre-order the album) right here. Having had a chance to hear Interzone in its entirety, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Give ear…

Some Buzz

How many bands do you know that can take the blueprint for heavy music and rip it to shreds? Well, get ready to add Reflex Machine to that list. Locking themselves in a house in Columbus, Ohio, the duo beat the proverbial shit out of drums and bass to concoct their debut full-length Interzone. What emerges puts a prism to ‘post-metal’; this is quite unlike the garden variety, going out-of-bounds to circle back around with several other variants of metal in tow.

Hats off to James. Who knew that a bass could make so many sounds? The record is littered with noodling lines, thick sludge, tremolo to make Fenriz blush, wall-of-sound, and plenty more besides. Alex is no slacker on drums either, as he cooks up a storm that borrows as much from trad-doom’s power as it does from 90s groove metal. Both of them put in work on vocals as well, with myriad screeches, yells, growls and cleans to do justice to the warped concept on which the album is based.

And what a concept it is: the horrifying realities of a disavowed cop named Jones facing himself and his sordid past through the absurdly demented A.I. of a futuristic force of unfathomable cruelty - a sentient building known as Interzone. The album launches on an unsettling note, and never lets up until “Mugwump” lumbers into view with all its psychedelic sludge - after the listener has been battered with Sumac-level intensity (“Framed”) and mind-melding rhythms that call forth At The Drive-In (“Machina”).

In case all of this sounds like Reflex Machine have left a lot to chew on, it’s entirely intentional. If the notion of a lovechild between Sumac, early Mastodon, Neurosis, and At the Drive-In sounds of interest, then Interzone will be right up your alley - or lurking in one nearby.