Berlin noisy people, have a breakdown for our entertainment. Not at all accompanied by breakbeats and complaints about Mc Donalds, making it a DHR first.
A couple of weeks ago, concorde crashed in France, I'm sure you heard about it at the time. Witnesses said it emitted a horrific noise during its dying minutes. You have to wonder if Air France had a similar mishap last year around central London. It is probably just my twisted sense of humour that finds the idea of thousands of goths being subjected to this record quite hilarious. (For the unaware, the live album was recorded while ATR finished a tour by supporting Nine Inch Nails. Most of the band were having some kind of nervous breakdown on the tour, it's a very rock'n'roll story, I’m sure you can imagine.)
As far as I can tell there is not a melody to be found, irritatingly, there are no songs either. Just one 30 minute relentless barrage of dying machinery (very melodramatic machinery), you can’t even hear the crowd. The only thing to suggest it is humans making this noise is some inaudible scream at the beginning presumably by Nic Endo. You may be able to hear a bit of shouting somewhere in there, as Alec protests in the liner notes, but you would be very stupid to concentrate hard enough to hear it. You WILL get a headache if you listen to this for more than 15 minutes.
There seems no reason why anyone but sadists or Digital Hardcore Anoraks (erm sadists) would buy this. But don’t put away that money yet. If you haven’t got Metal Machine Music, and you probably haven’t, it is a must buy. Picture the scene, some eedjit ranting on about how lush that new Coldplay album is, puts this lovely bit of vinyl on and watch them run. It works just as well for Nine Inch Nail fans, apparently.
As a piece of music 0/5, for pissing off the neighbours 5/5.