The Machine - Calmer Than You Are

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*Kind of a scattered review, wrote this in about 20 minutes, sue me. I'll get around to editing it later.

Dear me has the time flown by. Last I remember, it was 2006 and I had just discovered the psych part of stoner rock. I had fallen in love with Kyuss, Fu, all the staples a few years beforehand, and I distinctly remember hearing Colour Haze S/T for the first time and thinking, "THIS is the new direction". Well, of course, what the hell did I know, I was only 17 at the time, but I had a feeling that this new style of stoner rock was going to explode. Sure enough, tons of releases came along that proved that. Colour Haze seemed to be gaining some good exposure at this point, a lot of the South American psych bands started popping up in conversations more, and next thing you know, the psych albums started filling up my library pretty quickly.

Fast forward to 2012, and the stoner rock scene is burgeoning. I thought back then it was huge, now I wouldn't know where to tell a newcomer to start. That's neither here nor there, though. What matters is The Machine, and their criminally underlooked 2012 release 'Calmer Than You Are'. What could be called a rip-off by some, I call it a fine distillation of the best elements of psych rock.

The album starts off quietly, with a clean strummed guitar, subdued synths and very sparse sitar. It all sounds very familiar, but all very well executed. The band comes into their groove after about a minute, and carries you on Lamp Of The Universe/Colour Haze kind of trip until about three minutes, where they kick it into gear. Right at this moment you can tell these dudes are adept at keeping the ever elusive "groove". After a minute or two of some subtle feedback, they kick it into one of the greatest riff-worship moments to ever end a track.

This band isn't all flowers and riffs though, they do have some substance. Throughout the record you'll be taken on a journey that can only compete with the heavyweights of the scene. The songs ebb and flow like water, the vocals are unobtrusive, yet catchy, and as well strangely familiar. That's probably the strangest thing I find about The Machine, is just how damn familiar everything sounds, but they manage to pull it off so fucking well. They vary it up well too, with track times ranging from a solid 3 minutes to the 12 and a half minute long aural excursion "Sphere".

Now to finish this off, and put everything in perspective, I listen to a lot of music. A lot of it is just stoner and doom, but I try to listen to a bit of everything. With 'Calmer Than You Are', it's making it pretty fucking hard to get around to even some of other stoner/doom releases this year, nevermind the other stuff. It's just that fucking good.

Do yourself a favour, and buy/download/steal/bootleg/obtain however you can The Machine.

Link to the first track - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86DX2IRhPl4