Review by Sonny for Mechina - The Assembly of Tyrants (2005)

So, it appears that this is Mechina's debut album, released in 2005, a year after the band formed. I understand that they later went down a more symphonic path with their industrial sound, but here they have gone for straight-up classic Nineties-era Fear Factory worship. The riffs are decent with a meaty guitar tone FF fans will feel comfortably at home with, although I don't think Mechina's riffs have the same high memorability factor as the LA legends achieved on their best material. Where they do score well though is when they use synths to add an additional, thin layer to their sound, such as during "Afterimage" or on the title track. "War Fog", which connects the two tracks, is a short, synth-driven interlude which is also quite evocative and further illustrates the band's nascent atmosphere-building prowess. Vocalist David Holch also has a creditable crack at reproducing Burton C. Bell's growling bark as the main vocal, but where he comes unstuck is with the complementary clean vocals which, in all honesty, sound terrible, as if he can't carry a tune at all. They are so bad that I can't believe no one advised the band to re-record them or get a guest in to help out.

Ultimately, for me, this is an enjoyable enough slab of Fear Factory worship, irreparably tainted by very poor clean vocals, that I am unlikely to turn to in the future unless the FF back catalogue suddenly disappears from the face of the Earth.