Every bands’ sound evolves and changes, ebbs and flows over time; the reasons are numerous, but the process is essential. With The Fear Machine, we find Black Rose Burning moving back towards the darker, more synth-infused sound of their debut album, but this is anything but a backward step. More, it is the sound of a band returning to the scene of an earlier sonic triumph, only doing so as wiser, more experienced, and more astute music makers.
“The Herald of the Change,” which opens this, their fourth album, displays this blend of their early digital sound and their more analogue heavy later creations beautifully, with growling guitars and pummeling drums softened and sweetened by shimmering synth washes and chiming sonics, as the bombastic and the beautiful dance hand in hand.
“Odysseus” is a drifting and cinematic piece which muses on the possibility that the Maya and the Aztec’s, subjects that have long fascinated George Grant, were space travellers, the title track is a vibrant and velocitous future-dance groover and “When The Master Calls” echoes those early post-punk synth-pop pionoeers, the sound of the underground’s embrace of new technology going overground and radically reshaping the popscape.
And, as always, a Black Rose Burning album is so much more than just a series of songs, and here, as the title suggests, is an album exploring the idea of “a world kept in a constant state of fear to power a machine that feeds on human anxiety, grief, and agitation.” The titular Fear Machine. And whilst here those thoughts comes in the form of tales which feel like the realms of science fiction and alternative history, the parallels with what is going on in the world today are hard to miss.
It’s an album that initially catches you with its great music, a blend of familiar echoes and future potential, but the more you play it, the more you realise that perhaps the world has always been under the thumb of someone with a master plan. An ancient master race, an illuminati-like power behind the throne, the Annunaki, the Elder Gods? Don’t dismiss it out of hand; it would explain a lot. I mean a LOT!
The Fear Machine album
Apple Music
The Fear Machine album teaser
Into the Black album teaser
Winter Fields album teaser
Full album playlist
