Review: Lucifer Star Machine ” The Devil’s Breath” [The Sign Records]

I used the word “mix” in different variations pretty much in my reviews recently. The reason is simple: music is evolving, the genres’ frames became vaguer and musicians are really interested to make experiments. To tell the truth, “mixing” has also its ups and downs: some bands cope with this task greatly, for others it will be better not do it at all but anyway there is a tendency. Germans Lucifer Star Machine also mixing genres (very related genres, though), playing Punk’N’Roll and now they release their fourth album The Devil’s Breath.

Lucifer Star Machine was formed in London in 2002. The first single “Death Baby” (2004) was produced by Rat Scabies, original drummer and founder of the legendary The Damned. In 2005 the first longlpay Fire In Your Hole was released, four years after it was Street Value Zero and Rock’n’Roll Martyrs in 2013. A year earlier, in 2012 the band’s founder and leader Tor Abyss went back to his hometown Hamburg but the other members didn’t moved so Tor was used to start everything from the start. He recruits the whole German line-up and renewed Lucifer Star Machine begins to rehearse and perform. In 2019 the band performed at Wacken Open Air and works on The Devil’s Breath.

The album starts with “The Void”, where typical Skate Punk riff and rhythmical drums emphasize a good rock’-n’-roll solo; the song transmits the album’s mood greatly, showing the listener what to expect further. “Eat Dust” has also great and quite simple riff with marked Benny Zin’s bass and fast vocal line: it becomes a full of energy Punk Rock song created by Rock’-n’-Roll blueprint. And “Your Love Remains”, despite its pretty romantic mood, which can be easily heard in Tor’s voice, stands out with drummer Jay Impact’s good work.

Actually, Punk is presented quite diversely in the album. “Baby, When You Cry”, for example, reminds of Ramones pretty much (with some notes of peculiar romanticism). “Midnight Crawler” in its turn goes somewhere Horror Punk to the territory of Misfits with its ominous spree.

With this, it’s not only Punk Rock in The Devil’s Breath. Very melodic “Dwell In Misery” with deliberately polished sound (compared to other songs), sounds like it was taken from some Foo Fighters album. “El Camino Real” delivers the 60s atmosphere greatly, the main motif sounds like it was in some James Bond movie and Tor’s vocal is surprising with depth and lack of aggression. “Evil Blood” is the fastest and probably the heaviest song in the album: drums nearly go blast beats, a short solo in the beginning of the song sounds without any melody and vocalists unleashes his inner demons. The song is very impressive, especially on the contrast with “El Camino Real”.

The album ends with surprising acoustic “Devil’s Breath”, which is more Country with tints of Blues than Punk’n’Roll: it’s just a guitar, slight touch of piano and vocal. But the ironic thing is that the lyrics here are more inherent to some oldschool Thrash Metal than Country/Blues, but this makes the song more interesting.

It’d be a crime not to mention guitarists Mickey Necro and Marshall Speed work. The riffs here are quite simple (but played with a high energy though) but their solos are off the charts: fast, melodic and, let’s say, made in a good creative way, while staying in the frames of genres.

But the main benefit of the album and probably the band in a whole is that on one hand this music is recognizable and it’s quite easy to compare it with other bands but on the other hand all these songs are original works from the band with significant sound and their own things. So it’s all familiar, it’s all recognizable but nevertheless there are whole new and great songs. And I need to listen to the previous band’s albums.

The Devil’s Breath was released on April, 3 via The Sing Records.

Lucifer Star Machine:
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The Sign Records:
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