TREMONTI: A Dying Machine (ALTERNATIVE METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

The love story between music and science fiction is as long and passionate as the history of rock. Over the decades, it has given birth to a more or less legitimate offspring of concept albums fed on complex themes that challenge the troubled relationship between humans and machines. It's as much to say that launching into this kind of discographic adventure today is a risky project without a good dose of talent and sincerity.

Talent and sincerity are two of Mark Tremonti's characteristics. To which one must add bulimia for work and inspiration. With four albums in four years, "The Last Hero" with Alter Bridge, "Cauterize", "Dust" and this new solo "The Dying Machine", the guitarist never stops and his inspiration seems inexhaustible, all the more so as the man is also a painter and writer.

"The Dying Machine" is first and foremost a novel of anticipation which will come out after the concept album which is intended to set the story to music. Mark Tremonti wrote it in collaboration with the cyber-punk author John Shirley, himself with a glorious past with hard rock since he is responsible for almost all the lyrics of the albums "Heaven Forbid" and "The Curse Of The Hidden Mirror" by Blue Oyster Cult.

The reading of the novel will undoubtedly be necessary to understand this somewhat confusing story of machines with synthetic brains capable of feeling human emotions. But the musical language is universal and doesn't lie. "The Dying Machine" is an excellent album, Tremonti's best and most ambitious. All the ingredients of the American's music are gathered to make this opus a must in modern alternative metal: an irreproachable composition talent, a dizzying sense of riff, a constant melodic approach even in the heaviest tracks, and guitar solos that are always chiselled and efficient.

Mark Tremonti has often said it: his solo project is the metal counterpart of Alter Bridge's heavy rock. "The Dying Machine" has a lot of great tracks with sharp riffs and catchy choruses ('Bringer Of War', 'From The Sky', 'The Day When Legions Burned'). With a formidable precision, the guitarist offers us bravery tracks and asserts his influences, first of all Metallica's Thrash ('A Lot Like Sin') and Slayer ('Throw Them To The Lions'). But Tremonti also knows how to vary the ambiences with superb power ballads on which his warm and emotional voice works wonders ('The First The Last', 'As The Silence Becomes Me') and to create surprise by incorporating industrial sounds ('Trust', 'Found') or by flirting with nu metal ('Trust') and punk ('Take You With Me').

But the most surprising aspect of "The Dying Machine" is its progressive dimension. First of all because the album is conceived like the soundtrack of a science-fiction movie and especially because several tracks are based on riff structures very close to progressive metal. This is the case of the excellent 'A Dying Machine' and 'Desolation' and especially of the orientalizing 'Make It Hurt' whose chorus evokes Myrath and whose magnificent solo is played in unison with the melody in the purest progressive spirit.

Endowed with an exemplary production and a huge rhythm section, "The Dying Machine" is an album of great richness and confirms if it was needed all the talent of Mark Tremonti, a frank and sincere artist, an underestimated singer, a gifted guitarist and a talented composer. Despite everything, the opus would probably have deserved to be a little shorter, even if its length is explained by the dimension of the project and its ambition to illustrate a literary text. In any case, it's on the way to being one of the most beautiful successes of the year. - Official website

TREMONTI

A DYING MACHINE

NAPALM RECORDS

ALTERNATIVE METAL