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?

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)