12122011

Sobre A Màquina - Areia (2011)

(drone / drone doom metal / industrial)

The first time I listened to Sobre A Máquina was an unintentionally terrifying moment. I had moved all of my stuff out of my apartment and the only things left were the four gray walls, a flat mattress and my nearly ancient, yet still sound-producing, speakers. I had forgotten my speakers on a volume just slightly too loud and when I pressed play on Lingua Negra I was met with a drill that drove straight into my eardrums and seemed to escape out of every hole in my body. I was left immobilized on the floor with the hauntigly slow melodies starting to occupy my mind. I couldn't turn the volume lower because some sadistic part of myself was already enjoying the cacophony created by the music bouncing off the empty walls of my flat, creating a vortex of echoes that made me balance on the verge of sanity.

Hailing from Brazil the band delivers a sound you might necessarily not expect. There is no cheer, no uproar, no emotion in this music. Areia presents the sounds of an abandoned factory in a world that seized to exist an eternity ago. The machines produce nothing and run on anything. Barca, a broken ship, is somehow full of unknown melacholy. Machinery of sadness.

The general sound of the album is quite raw and the line of enjoyment is not far. Consisting of only four tracks you would like them to form an entity as opposed to being singular track productions. Foz, for example, would work as a towering single piece of music but is not a team player, grasping all the attention.

A few years from now, I would like to have the same echo-experience with a matured Sobre A Màquina in a white apartment room with the resemblance of a sanitarium studio. A factory of dead sounds that would make me feel alive.