Audiences can at times mistake novelty for quality. Many a Black Metal album has been hailed as the future of metal in the past for its achievements in mashing unrelated genres together, for example. It is no surprise to me that an album like Disfiguring The Goddess’ newest, The Brutal Machine, has not made waves. The concoction of popular electronic music with Deathcore doesn´t really seem like the thing that the most kvlt among metal elitists would champion, even though it appears similarly extravagant. Unfortunately, The Brutal Machine has little going on for it beyond the novelty. The atmospheric base sound of the album is soft, spherical EDM. Sounds are plucked mostly from the Trance realm, but also appear like Ambient or Dub at times. Washy textures that are often surprisingly undanceable could provide contrast to the attack-heavy guitars of Deathcore and thus produce a unique artistic statement, but the little potential that there could be gets squandered by the production choices. The album seems at no point interested in breaking the fundamental trance mood that it has, pushing the guitars back in the mix and, more egregiously, washes them out.
This production choice, while committed, leads to the fundamental issue of the album: There is almost no purpose to the inclusion of the Deathcore elements. The Deathcore is not particularly inspired, often following the harmonic lead of the electronic elements to a tee. The glacial harmonic tempo provided leads to the guitar work being stale, uninspired and unenergetic. Deathcore is so focused on the rhythmic impact of basic power chords that it never stood a chance with the production choices. Now, I am aware that I am approaching this from the mind of a metalhead, of course. Disfiguring The Goddess have in the past had a harsher sound and the electronic elements were mostly Dubstep inspired. As Dubstep is an electronic music genre similarly interested in rhythmic impact and telegraphed breakdowns, it seemed like a perfect match. Playing devils advocate, I could argue that, in choosing a new, more Trance and Ambient inspired direction, the metal is due to take the backseat. The electronic side of the album would need to really perform for this argument to work, however, and it just does not. I will not claim to be an expert on electronic music, but I have heard all of this before and better. Artists like Floating Points have melded electronic music with other genres without losing the essence of it and at the same time making the hybridization feel purposeful, a trait that The Brutal Machine simple does not possess.
