This past Spring, Ozium Records offered up God Damn Rare, collecting together demos and off-album pieces, outtakes and so on from long-defunct Swedish troupe The Awesome Machine. The Gothenburg-based band, who might be considered one of the multitudes whose work demonstrated the inevitable unreliability of corporate social media to archive with any sense of permanence — that is, when MySpace disappeared, so did much of their presence other than on the CD/LP racks of those who already owned their records; there’s a lesson in there somewhere but sometimes it feels like humanity is trapped in the current social media sphere even as it evolves, disintegrates in part — called it quits in 2006, and just the other day announced that the same label will stand behind a God Damn Rare Vol. 2 in 2023.

I’m not saying The Awesome Machine are back together, that they should get back together, or that I know anything in any regard about anything, ever, but two rare tracks collections shows an awful lot of contextual interest on the part of a group who aren’t looking to get back out again in any way, not to mention Ozium, and the hint dropped below with ‘In 2023 many great things will happen’ feels significant. These guys were ahead of the pack in the aughts, and it would be interesting to see how they fared in a return, if in fact the God Damn Rare offerings are a precursor to such a thing, but even if not, they’re worth investigating for the generation of listeners who’ve come up in heavy rock since they broke up. If these pique interest even just toward that, so much the better.

The band’s posting of the complementary cover art and quick announcement of the release follows from the aforementioned modern social media sphere. Preorders to follow:

So 2022 is almost to an end, a year that brought many surprises in The Awesome Machine bandcamp. And it’s not over yet. In 2023 many great things will happen, this being one of them. The great label @ozium_records will release God Damn Rare vol 2.

We dug out even more demo’s, outtakes and rare/unreleased stuff. Artwork is once again created by the fantastic Johan Anderberg.

Pre-orders will soon be available so keep an eye on Ozium records bandcamp website.

https://www.facebook.com/awesomemachinetheband

https://www.facebook.com/oziumrecords
https://www.instagram.com/ozium_records/
https://oziumrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://oziumrecords.com/

The Awesome Machine, God Damn Rare (2022)