“Welcome to the Machine” Pink Floyd once said. I remember
vividly tripping out to that song every time it floated through my speakers.
The psychedelic, spaced-out and futuristic
progressiveness gets me nervous to this day. Imagine if the Floyd crew were
buried deep beneath the murkiest swamps of the south. Now imagine I never
mentioned Pink Floyd but their rotting corpses started a band anyway. Well,
welcome to the Swamp Machine folks.
You hear
that? What’s that smell? Over there look! The boggy smoke is rising from the
chilled mire ponds. Dead limbs hang desolately above the gurgling swamp. Aghori Ritual has begun its worship,
plodding slow sinister riffage. Highly intoxicated hallucinations of southern
metal bubble up from the marsh, popping with a stench vocal aroma. Somewhere
between Hangman’s Chair and DOWN the opening number displays what Swamp
Machine’s debut album Mondo Magic is
capable of.
Webs and Spirals of heavy doom infested
psychedelic stoner groove. “Am I just
crazy or deeply insane?… Words and the wisdom are so hard to find..”
Fitting lyrics as the Swamp Machine churns its corroded gears into your brain.
There’s little hope for escape, that being the slightly up beat energy on
display throughout Webs and Spirals.
But the web is too sticky and the spirals too confusing to find your way to the
surface of the slough.
Burning Road torches the darkness with
flames of malicious intent. Packed with jagged southern solos, it sounds like a
pile of rotting animal carcasses smells, engulfed in a blaze of smoke. Nothing
survives the Swamp Machine’s intensity. Ashes to ashes are continually absorbed
into the thick rumbling mud to enhance the swamp’s already viscous texture.
Gone strums
desolation into its victims. Vocals echo through the sludge as bluesy chords
wrap bodies with cloaks of psychotic grandeur.
Skulls whisper frightening bellows from
beneath the caves of the swamp’s underworld. It’s now that reality sets in that
reality is in fact a figment of hope. Sinister vocal chants plod behind slow
fuzzed up strokes of distortion which permeate the empty brain cavity inducing
a sense of comfort amongst the stained marrow zombie creations.
At this
point your ear canal is overflowing with 10 tons of crematory sludge. To
mitigate the damage the Swamp Machine cools down its steamy, stony stroke with
a soothing instrumental lullaby. After one full cycle Swamp Machine proves it’s
got the horsepower to manipulate the mind and scarify the soul. Heavily tripped
out southern sludge at its finest. Welcome to the Swamp Machine.
-The Huntsman
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