On their latest album, Act Of Self Destruction, Pennsylvania duo Malice Machine delivers a collection of tightly focused “aggro-punk” songs that embrace old-school electronic/industrial influences within a modern context. The group consists of Syn Thetic and Julie-X, who had previously worked together as a drum and bass player team within various Long Island industrial and gothic bands. Act Of Self Destruction is their third album as Malice Machine, and it concludes with a cover of the Trans-X classic “Living on Video.”
In an email interview, Malice Machine discussed the album.
Could you provide some background info on Malice Machine and its members? Have you been involved with other musical projects previously? What were your inspirations and goals in starting Malice Machine?
With Malice Machine we started as a machine rock/industrial metal project with Syn on vocals and guitar and Julie-X on drums. But that evolved into a more electronic sound with less guitar and now it’s current incantation is fully electronic, driven heavily by drum and bass. We knew we wanted to do something a bit aggressive and we felt the name fit the concept perfectly.
Before Malice Machine, we worked together as a drum and bass player team, playing in various goth and industrial bands on Long Island NY and that was usually a collective effort when it came to original music, with each member playing a dedicated part. We soon found that after working with a good amount of members that we worked best as a duo. Somehow Syn wound up taking over vocal responsibilities and it naturally progressed from there.??
The first thing that struck me when I listened to ‘Act of Self Destruction’ was that it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite albums, Front Line Assembly’s Caustic Grip. It doesn’t sound derivative, but the overall feeling and some of the rhythms and sequences seem reminiscent. Was that era of electronic/industrial music an influence? If so, were there particular ways you wanted to take elements of the style in new directions?
I think you described it very well. Yes we are influenced by old Front 242 and Front Line Assembly. Those were the great old days when things were less complicated song-wise with very strong drum and bass that struck a chord with us. Of course we want to have an original sound but we’re not ashamed to have a comparison to that great era of music. With this album, we designed the songs to be shorter in a punk style and doused them with heavy electronic elements so I think our sound will always have a bit of retro and modern mixed.
Are there any particular pieces of gear or software that you find essential for creating your music?
Syn has an overwhelming amount of soft synths and a number of hard synths in the studio so he’s always using something different for each song. Can’t really say there’s anything that’s a go to. It really depends on the song and what feels best for it though a Clavia Nord Lead 1 is coming in very handy for bass lines.
I’ve seen a few live videos online; could you discuss your approach to performances? Does it require rethinking some of the sequenced parts? Do you have melodic elements triggered by the electronic drum kit?
For live we’ve really simplified our set-up. Julie-X used to set up an entire electronic drum kit but now has a few electronic pads and plays them while standing. It’s such a pleasure that it takes us less then half the time to set up now a days. Aside from the kick, Julie-X plays all the drum and percussion parts. Everything generated by electronics is tracked so nothing is triggered. The synths and noise are pretty faithful to the recordings. We certainly want to sound live but we also try to replicate what’s on the record.
What inspired you to cover “Living on Video”? And did it make you feel obligated to create a video for that song?
Coming up with a good remake is never easy. In the past we’ve covered some old standards (ie; Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Ministry) and we could’ve also easily ended this album with an original song but we felt “Living on Video” has never been covered so it was a great choice. We took some liberties and changed almost all the lyrics because it became evident that it was a perfect representation of modern social media. We never intended on doing a video for it, but we wanted to make two videos for this album and this song was an opportune visual vehicle to mock the toxic elements of social media.
I saw your Facebook post about a stop-motion film. Could you provide more details about that?
Glad you asked about that. Syn has always been an avid stop-motion fan and has been doing it seriously for a few years now. He’s been working on this particular cyber stop-motion film for over 2 years and there’s still a little bit of a ways to go, but it’s about ¾ complete. This film was going to feature Malice Machine album tracks and was certainly a more unique way to draw attention to our music but we’ve decided to incorporate other music artists in the film and that is exciting.
What are your plans now that Act of Self Destruction is out? Touring? Further videos?
We have some live dates coming up and certainly looking for more. Always important to support a new release by playing live. We have no plans to do anymore videos for this album but we’re working on remixes by other artists and plan on putting out another song soon. We also feel an occasional video is a definite benefit so we have quite a number of things planned for the future.
Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
First of all we’d like to thank you for giving us a platform to tell a little about ourselves. As independent artists we’d like to say we appreciate anyone that supports us, even a small amount of support makes all our efforts worthwhile.
For more info and to purchase music, visit malicemachine.bandcamp.com.
