"the perfect soundtrack to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
-Lou Reed

"The greatest album ever made in the history of the human eardrum."
-Lester Bangs

"I am astounded ... at the wonderful power you have developed -- and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever."
-Arthur Sullivan, upon viewing of Edison's talking machine in 1888

   Metal Machine Music is an album Lou Reed produced by stacking speakers, amps, and electric guitars up, and letting them produce feedback. It's four tracks of 16 minutes each, though few people have willingly listened to all four in a single sitting (I've now done it once, and will probably not do that to myself again). On the vinyl version, each side held a single track, and the tracks looped back on themselves at the end, a second or so repeating forever. Sadly, the CD can't do that.

   MMM is a seamless wall of noise only a feedback-fetishist (like myself) would call beautiful, and then it's over and you're panting, exhausted... Unless you listen to two or more sides in a row, then the hallucinations, nausea, and eventually vomiting, madness, and death occur. It's In the Mouth of Madness in soi-disant musical form.

   There's quadrophonic sound in it - sort of. The stereo is played backwards on the rear channels in sections; not intentionally, apparently, but because it bled through. Like some Lovecraftian Elder God's mad piping, it can't be constrained in a physical medium.

   After a few listens, you start to hear melodies in it sometimes. I'm not sure if they're there or if I'm hallucinating them as the album drives me insane.

   It's like when you're 6 years old, and you go on your first roller-coaster, and you're scared out of your wits, sick to your stomach... and you immediately want to do it again and again.

   I highly recommend it, but I take no responsibility for any neural damage you suffer.

Last Modified: 2002Mar27