Aural Aggravation

Cruel Nature Records – 27th March 2026

The work ethos of Pound Land always makes me think of The Fall – and the same is true of the relentless repetition of their compositions. And it comes as no surprise that Red, the second studio by Pound Land side-project Machine Mafia, consisting of Jase Kester and Adam Stone, was recorded in a single day. Keeping things in-house, it was mastered by Agent Kester, too.

Whether or not the album’s title is in any way connected to its being recorded at Big Red Studios in Macclesfield, we don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. What matters – and what we are told – is that ‘Lyrically, Red explores themes such as the sanctity of personal freedom, the dreary mediocrity of business academia, the medicalisation of human behaviour, the strange comfort found in boredom, and supernatural motorcycle-riding anti-heroes with flaming skulls.’ Some of these topics I find personally relatable (my brief time as a university tutor was not enjoyable, essentially working a zero-hours contract teaching modules miles beyond my own field of research, to receive poor feedback from students who’d shelled out thousands for a degree and felt let-down by having a tutor who wasn’t a specialist, and only worked limited hours, so wasn’t sitting in their office for drop-in visits or able to respond to emails immediately. My favourite was a student emailing me five minutes before an essay submission deadline asking where the submission sheets were on the website while I was on a train with no access to my emails), others less so (I simply don’t get boredom: there’s always too much to do). But what I absolutely get is channelling all the frustration into something creative.

Given that Pound Land are kings of gnarly, repetitive, grinding noise and that Kester’s work outside Pound Land (Plan Pony, Omnibael / Ombibadger) has explored numerous shades of abrasive racket, that Machine Mafia create an unholy din is to be expected, and that’s what they provided with their debut album, Zoned, released almost a year ago to the day of this, their second full-length. But whereas Zoned tended to deliver short, sharp sonic assaults, with the majority of the thirteen tracks clocking in at less than five minutes, Red really pushes the boundaries, the five track release dominated by a brace of megalithic monsters in the shape of the thirteen-and-a-half-minute ‘Business Studies’ and their epic rendition of Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider’ – which is even more manic and more brutal than the one performed by Foetus with Marc Almond. As for its colossal elongation, although the original is a mere two and a half minutes long, its hypnotic, repetitive groove could readily withstand looping into eternity. The Sisters of Mercy used to run it for six minutes or so as an encore in 1984 and ’85, Eldritch cutting loose with the Alan Vega screams. Machine Mafia tweak the tempo up a notch, and it’s a messy, dirty blast of electropunk, Stone spitting and whooping the words through the mangled metallic whir of overloading electronics.

It’s the perfect finale, and sits perfectly with the originals, which are a mess of pounding beats, squalling feedback, and angry vocals. The first of these, ‘NO’, is a relentless howl, five minutes of nonstop thunder and ear-splitting treble, Stone rabid and raving.

‘DSM’ is more straightforward noise rock, a bass-driven blast with layers of feedback. The format is repetition, repetition, repetition, like a noise reimagining of The Fall, drawing in elements of Metal Urbain. ‘Business Studies’ is simply brutal, a bludgeoning bastard of a noise with the refrain ‘fuck business studies’. ‘It’s all shit and piss’, Stone summarises with the kind of anguish that feels like he’s bursting out of his very skin. The vocals are thick with distortion, the glitching bass blasts from the speakers with dangerous density and it’s all wrapped in a mesh of feedback that makes The Jesus and Mary Chain sound like easy listening. ‘Boredom’ takes its cues from Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Discipline’ and adds wild feedback to the mix. It’s punishing.

There’s an additional, unnamed, ‘secret’ track a little way after ‘Ghostrider’, and it’s a messy, lo-fi mess of crashing drum machines and grinding synths over which Stone rants so hard you can almost hear the spittle. It sounds like early Uniform – stark, harsh, rabid.

Uncompromising doesn’t come close. Red is absolutely fucking punishing. If you’re into dense, dark, nasty noise, you need this.

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