‘The counterfeit ambitions, The collaborators shill, Is used as ammunition, While your frontal lobe is shelled’ (Digital Rot)

Drones circle the sky, while armoured police cars patrol the streets, and paramilitaries forcefully enforce stop and searches, all while under the all-seeing eye of batteries of CCTV cameras.  The seeds of military occupation boomeranging back to enforce domestic control.  It would be terrifying, had we even noticed.  But we’re all too busy, glued to our screens, behaviours and thoughts being scraped for others to monetise and to feed the surveillance machine.

L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation are back, once again mining the rich connections between technology, militarisation, and capitalism.  Machine Hallucinations is the New York band’s fourth full-length since their 2015 debut album, Digital Control And Man’s Obsolesence. In something of a rare phenomenon, each of their albums has been even better than its already excellent predecessor.

They have achieved this progression very much through incremental evolution, deftly introducing new elements to complement their resolutely early 1990s’ industrial base.  Fiercely metallic riffage and darkly pulsing electronica are skilfully interwoven with dance fuelled rhythms and anthemic choruses.  This ability to seamlessly marry the harsh and the abrasive with the ineffably catchy and the downright infectious lies at the very heart of their sound.

An unsettling instrumental intro in collaboration with Igor Cavalera primes the atmosphere perfectly, before Celebrate The Suffering is unleashed in its full clanking glory – all together now… ‘On your knees, On your knees, Get on your knees, As they celebrate the suffering’.  And from that point the intensity doesn’t drop for even a moment.

The slab like riffs and choral chants of Absolute Insanity.  The escalating fervour of Boots On The Ground, ethereal backing vocals intertwining with the thumping percussion and demonically distorted ‘Left, Right, Left, Right’ mantra.  The utterly fervent agitations of Never Say Never in collaboration with synth punks La Pregunta?.  Before the uproariously melodic Five Star General (Of My Heart), which features Lulu of Fairytale and brought the house down when L.O.T.I.O.N. laid waste to London a couple of years back, brings the album to a surprisingly upbeat climax.