Friday Full-Length: The Awesome Machine, The Soul of a Thousand Years
Posted in Bootleg Theater on July 30th, 2021 by JJ KoczanReleased in 2003, The Soul of a Thousand Years was the final of five albums from Swedish heavy rockers The Awesome Machine. It’s probably not their best-known work, which might be their 1998 self-titled debut or 2000’s …It’s Ugly or Nothing, but for a decade from 1996 to 2006, they developed a take on meaty fuzz riffs and particularly Swedish burl that no one else ever managed to do in the same way during their era. After their 1999 second album, Doom, Disco, Dope, Death and Love, which was self-released, their last three LPs — the aforementioned …It’s Ugly or Nothing, 2002’s Under the Influence (also a gem) and The Soul of a Thousand Years — were all issued through People Like You Records. Now a subsidiary of Century Media — and it may have been then as well for all I know — the German imprint centers mostly on psychobilly and garage rock, very post-Hellacopters stuff, and acts like The Bones and so on. Their website doesn’t even mention any of these releases, so apart from the secondary market, they’ve been unavailable for however long.
The lineup on The Soul of a Thousand Years was vocalist Lasse Olausson, bassist Anders Wenander, guitarist Christian Smedström and drummer Tobbe Bövik, and the record is rife with hidden guest appearances from around the Gothenburg metal set of the time, but the impact is much more about the songs themselves. They open spacious on “Eating Me Slowly,” with big drums behind bigger guitars and vocals that soar largely because of the gutted-out power pushing them forward — Olausson reportedly blew out his voice during the recording in such a way as to have done permanent damage, removing his ability to tour and factoring into his leaving the band; listening to the record now, I believe it — but even in that track there’s an immediacy to the chorus that finds ready answer throughout the 12-song span.
With quiet stretches in the eventually-bursts-in-volume
moody highlight “Scars” and the later more gradual build of “Not My War” (the vocal layering there is subtle but worth specifically appreciating) that prove no less memorable than anything that surrounds them, cuts like “Forgotten Words,” “Hunt You Down,” “My Friend,” “Black Hearted Son” and “Bring Out the Dead” are ragers worthy of anything from the era you’d want to set them up against. “My Friend” careens and stomps with an intensity that’s raw despite sounding so full — oh, that bass is a delight; see also “Deadly Caress” and, well, just about everywhere — and all the while, the four-piece let loose killer hooks regardless of tempo or other aesthetic intent. For instance, they necessarily tell you that in “Hunt You Down,” with its great, lumbering swing, that it’s King Kong doing the hunting, but you get the idea anyway, and the song still gets stuck in your head. It is a multiple-tiered win.
And a multiple-tiered album. At 12 songs and 50 minutes, you would be within rights to call it a relic of the CD era, but one could hardly accuse The Awesome Machine of filler. The tracks vary widely. “Hunt You Down” moves into “Scars” moves into “My Friend” moves into the drum-centered, keyboard-inclusive interlude “Ghosts of Patroklos,” which is one of several short instrumental breaks where the forward shove of The Soul of a Thousand Years lets up. After “Black Hearted Son” delivers one of the collection’s most engaging heavy rock onslaughts and the subsequent “Deadly Caress” rolls out its own slower, creepier, still-chorus-minded and still-definitely-weighted fare, the analog pops and manipulated, sounds-like-an-old-78RPM guitar of “Tom’s Serenade” (Tom who? I don’t know) step back before the final movement of “Bring Out the Dead,” “Not My War” and the broader-echoing, intentionally-melodic closing title-track — the lyrics of which are largely kept to repetitions of the title-line — brings the album to a jammy, surprisingly fuzzed finish, consistent in its roll but purposefully left more open in its structure. If it’s a bid to emphasize how far The Awesome Machine have pulled their audience since the outset pair of “Eating Me Slowly” and “Forgotten Words,” the message of a journey undertaken is well received.
For a band to have established their sound five records into their career isn’t a huge surprise. The Awesome Machine knew their game and obviously knew how to put a full-length together from a procession of tracks. Frankly, they proved that before The Soul of a Thousand Years even came along. What their final album managed to do, however, was push the aggressive tendencies of Under the Influence into a more coherent form around tight-crafted, distinct songs. If you think about the progression of fellow Swedes Dozer and the shift they were undertaking at the time toward harder-hitting material, The Awesome Machine weren’t so far apart in ideology, but their melodies, the spaces they cover across their last offering and the identity that emerges therefrom is theirs in its entirety. This record, whatever identifiable genre roots and stylistic familiarities it might present, stands on its own in the strength of its writing, performance and overarching production.
After Olausson left, The Awesome Machine continued on by bringing in vocalist John Hermansen, who also made a debut in 2004 with Mother Misery. There are live videos available, but to my limited knowledge, apart from the two-song single “Demon King” released as a 7″ in 2005, there were no other proper recordings of that lineup.
I might be proved wrong, as The Awesome Machine just recently announced a deal with Ozium Records on their Facebook to issue a collection of rare tracks from throughout their career in limited numbers this Fall. No tracklist or specifics on that yet, but that there’s continued interest in the band some 15 years after their breakup should tell you something about the quality of the work they did together.
This was a record that, when I was a beardless lad discovering my way from more aggro metals into heavy rock groove, helped me understand that transition and how something could be heavy in a different way. Accordingly, it continues to hold a special place, and I’ll tell you honestly that putting it on even after a number of years of not hearing it, the songs came right back like old friends.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
Thanks for reading.
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The Patient Mrs. is away for a few days, visiting old friends of her own. High school friends, in fact. We met in high school, so I know them as well, but the number of people I keep in touch with from that time in my life is about two-point-five — including my wife — and I’m pleased with that, generally speaking. But she’s well earned a couple days’ respite after having her work/life balance upended for the last year and a half. Let her go get drunk and have ladychat. It will be rough on Sunday when she comes home and invariably does the I-didn’t-do-any-work-for-three-days-so-I’m-totally-overwhelmed-and-also-really-exhausted-because-three-days-of-hardcore-social-interaction-is-draining, but worth it in the longer term. Not an undertaking I expect she’ll regret. She’s back on Sunday.
I meanwhile have been working on putting together a couple interviews. I’ll say outright that it fucking sucks to write about a band for 17 years and not be cool enough to get the guitar player to do a Zoom chat. That is humbling in a way that the music industry has always been humbling. Not that I’m owed anything, not that I’m entitled to anyone’s time or anyone’s entitled to mine, but yeah, oof. In the meantime though, I talked to Amber Burns from Witchkiss yesterday afternoon about her new band Guhts, and in about 25 minutes I’m on with Pat Harrington from Geezer with a plan just basically to catch up. Also there was the Hippie Death Cult interview that went up today, so I’m trying to keep up with that after being kind of derailed for the Quarterly Review a few weeks back. Making up for lost time and whatnot.
And of course I’m on full-go Pecan duty for a couple days. Dude has camp for a couple hours in the morning, so that’s good. Yesterday he had speech in the afternoon and took a nap — thereby facilitating the Guhts int — and today we’re going to go to the Turtle Back Zoo and bum around and ride the train, ponies, carousel, etc., for a while before probably going to Costco and back here for dinner. We’ll see. I’m not in a terrible rush or particularly worried about it. The truth is he’s a pretty good kid, and a little more prone to cooperate when he’s not showing off for his mother. I have high expectations for him, but he consistently meets them in a way a three-year-old might. I expect the zoo will be crowded since the weather’s nice, but it’s all outside so I’m not concerned about plague exposure so much as sun exposure. Hats and suncreen for all. Maybe a mask for me. He’ll have snackies.
Tomorrow’s a loaf day, which means morning cartoons (Daniel Tiger, maybe some Peep), and then my family is going to come hang out, so that should be good. I’ll be up early working on stuff for Monday — gotta stay ahead while you can — so if you need me for anything, I’m around.
Whatever you’re up to, I wish you a great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head. All that stuff. Back for more shenanigans on Monday.
FRM.
the cat to hit up for a discussion about making Circle of Days both as a producer and an artist involved in the baseline creative process. Turned out he was. The conversation was initially mired in technical difficulties — it’s amazing that “crappy connection” has continued to be a theme throughout decades and generations of communication technologies, from “Mabel can you put me through to Klondike-609” to “Let me send you a new Zoom link, hang on,” but here we are — but Brnabic‘s personality actually mirrors the style of Hippie Death Cult in its subdued engagement. Neither performer nor group is a full-on blowout, but both offer an assurance of purpose and a subtlety. With the songs of Circle of Days, even the drift feels heavy.
