{"id":7661,"date":"2025-08-18T18:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T18:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/7661\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T18:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T18:21:08","slug":"old-machines-the-cycles-of-extinction-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/7661\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Machines – The Cycles of Extinction Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Picture the scene: it\u2019s 3 am, and the bar is about to close. the last remaining customers\u2014a table of four long-haired, denim and leather-clad men\u2014are being shooed out. As they stagger, laughing, out the door, the bartender hears one of them (who he doesn\u2019t know is guitarst Brian Rush of \u00c6nigmatum<\/strong>, et al) saying, \u201cWait, wait, ok ok yeah so you\u2019re on the keyboards doing the melody, and then I\u2019m\u2014what are we going for\u2014black, death, thrash?\u2026Yeah, awesome\u2026\u201d In this imagined world, the unsuspecting eavesdropper just witnessed the birth of Old Machines<\/strong>, who may well have begun work on their 2024 demo Backwards Through Space that very night. A year on, the crew\u2014whose notable members also include Oxygen Destroyer<\/strong> percussionist Chris Craven\u2014make their full-length debut with The Cycles of Extinction, which takes their craft and their concept from zero right to infinity, and beyond.<\/p>\n

Cycles of Extinction is steeped in lore billions of years old, telling stories of peoples and times spanning aeons and light years\u2014which may or may not be plotlines from many cherished video games\u2014and sporting a runtime spanning an hour. Old Machine<\/strong>\u2019s chosen format could perhaps best be described as being to symphonic death metal what Old Nick <\/strong>is to raw black metal. The bulk of the music is led by the keys, which do not attempt to disguise their jam-core sound that fluctuates between dungeon-synth camp and the kind of ambient sound-healing hum you\u2019d get at the end of a yoga session in 2002. Guitars largely follow the rhythm and timbre of the synths\u2014with many a hammer-on and pull-off ascending and descending alongside the identically clambering keys\u2014if they don\u2019t chug and gallop along to the next dramatically marching beat. There are some acrobatics, but they never usurp that keyboard\u2019s position at centre-stage. Fast and mostly straightforward drumming keeps things at a vibrant up-tempo, with just a hint of thrashy energy, and croaking snarls share roughly equal space with booming spoken-word narration. It\u2019s uncomplicated, but not without a certain charming passion and weirdness.<\/p>\n

\ufeffThe Cycles of Extinction by Old Machines<\/a><\/p>\n

If nothing else, Cycles of Extinction sounds like Old Machines<\/strong> had a lot of fun making it. The tongue-in-cheek melodrama of the unadorned keyboard swooping through a movement, whilst the drums batter and riffs riff meanly, (\u201cGlory to the Terrans of the First Contact War\u201d) like something out of an N64 game fight scene (\u201cThe Sundering of the Irradiated Sons, and the Rebellion Sparked by the Gene-Plague\u201d) is so silly it kind of works. There are moments where it\u2019s almost genius: the deceleration and acceleration of \u201cCycles of Extinction,\u201d complete with well-timed spoken word and manic screams; or the sudden vivacious grace of the guitars on \u201cThey Are Legion: The Tragic Exodus of the Veiled Creators \u201d that breaks the mould and outdoes the keys for just a moment, before the twain tumble back down a scale together. The first (\u201cCycles of Extinction\u201d), and maybe even the second (\u201cExtinguishing the Light of the Preludian Empire (Upon the Apex of Their Glory)\u201d), time you hear that choir effect, played in an on-off jaunt that betrays their origin as having nothing at all to do with a human voice, it\u2019s nigh impossible not to smile. But the question is: at what point are you no longer laughing with Old Machines<\/strong>, but laughing at them?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Old Machines<\/strong>, the very synthetic-sounding synths with their repeated use of the same effects, chuggy, fast guitars, and prevalent spoken-word gets old. The pattern changes but little until the final two tracks \u201cThey Are Legion\u2026\u201d and \u201cGlory to the Terrans\u2026\u201d\u2014which in fairness do account for nearly a quarter of the runtime\u2014when all of the best riffs, melodies, and moments are hastily stuffed in next to all the above. This is odd enough, and yet far more baffling is the decision to include two extended passages of ambience. The first one opens the album on a decidedly slow and tonally incongruent note as the first third of the 11-minute opener \u201cTwilight of the Old Gods and the Dawning of the First Cycle.\u201d The other slams the breaks on mid-album for a full eight minutes and 38 seconds of uneventful vagary (\u201cDark Space and Beyond \u2013 The Continuance of the Evolution of the Final Cycle\u201d). If you were vibing with Old Machines<\/strong>\u2019 weird keyboard blackened death metal before, then this ice cold shower kills the mood and exacerbates the irritation of following track \u201cCrescendo of Carnage: Warsong of the Singing Swarm (Swarm Wars I)\u201d and its especially jerky, stabby riff and key combos.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Old Machines<\/strong> had an idea, and they ran with it. Maybe it\u2019ll tickle some listeners enough in just the right way, because it is at times kinda fun. But even looking past the goofiness, the album\u2019s structural issues\u2014the monotone ambience and behemoth length\u2014are sure to test the most saintly of patiences. If we can believe the band, The Cycles of Extinction is only the beginning; we\u2019ll just have to wait and see whether Old Machines<\/strong> double down on the cheese, or evolve.<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> Mixed
DR:<\/strong> 8 | Format Reviewed:<\/strong> 320kbps mp3
Label: <\/strong>Self-Release
Websites: <\/strong>Bandcamp<\/a> | Facebook<\/a>
Releases Worldwide:<\/strong> August 22nd, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picture the scene: it\u2019s 3 am, and the bar is about to close. the last remaining customers\u2014a table…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[7738,1135,7739,7740,7281,7741,18,7742,117,19,17,337,7743,7744,1142,1143,7745,7746,7747,7748],"class_list":{"0":"post-7661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-2-5","9":"tag-1135","10":"tag-aug2025","11":"tag-black-metal","12":"tag-death-metal","13":"tag-dungeon-synth","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-electronic-metal","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-music","20":"tag-old-machines","21":"tag-old-nick","22":"tag-review","23":"tag-reviews","24":"tag-self-releases","25":"tag-symphonic-death-metal","26":"tag-the-cycles-of-extinction","27":"tag-thrash-metal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}