Reviewed by Jim Coursey
Released: 1981 The Machines The Machines Have Landed Part One Genre: Sci Fi Prog Rock Rating: 2 out of 5 The lone album by Burlington, Ontario’s The Machines begins promisingly, with a lengthy sequence of newscasts filled with UFO conspiracy theories in which the US government has two alien spacecraft and twelve alien bodies. Gerald Ford’s release of these details appears imminent. Needless to say the anticipation builds. However, all interest is lost after two songs with the word “Trekkies” in the title and a barrage of pedestrian prog rock. It was hard to care enough to follow along, but the dumb humor of some of the lines was hard to escape: “Like a puppet on a string, if we lost our trust, we’d be like a toilet – broken.” (They liked that line so much they even sung it twice.) I suppose since the album was just the first of a multi-part series, the end leaves things hanging. The somewhat ominous closer “Mind and Body” reminds me a bit of something from the Residents' Mark of the Mole trilogy, as if drained of all its weirdness and covered by a mediocre prog band. Sure they can play, but to what end? Turning the Weekly World News into a prog rock concept album seems like it’s worth at least a laugh, doesn’t it? Well, as it turns out, it's not.
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