Lauren Hedges
LANCE WRITER


This Machine Kills Robots – A Horrid Heart Still Beats in It’s Mummified Remains (Independent)





A newer band onto the scene, This Machine Kills Robots is a four-piece instrumental surf band from Colchester. The band’s second release, the vividly named A Horrid Heart Still Beats In It’s Mummified Remains, was made available as a free download on their Bandcamp page in late May. With album art depicting a mummy surfing beneath the Ambassador Bridge, you can tell from the start that this is going to be interesting.

Through 12 songs and about 20 minutes, listeners are brought through a landscape of garage-band surf laden with the necessary spring reverb on the guitar, groovy drums and funktastic bass. The songs themselves are kept on the shorter side, the longest clocking in at 2:05.

The entire album flows in a very nice way, slipping from track to track seamlessly. When listened to as a whole, it is one continuous entity with an ebb and flow like the dirty waters shown on the cover. When picked apart and analyzed song by song, each definitely stands out on its own.

The closer, “Anterior Spines,” bubbles into what I can best describe as psychobilly surf, having an eerie quality that makes me imagine a zombie sock hop.

On “Apparaticide,” a bit more of the garage-punk flair that is embedded throughout the album comes to the surface. Steadily gaining momentum, the drums could easily be transplanted into a song by The Hookup, and with a different effect the guitars could be on an Alkaline Trio album.