Mind Over Matter – Automanipulation – Review

Mind Over Matter

Automanipulation (Wreck-Age)
by Gus

The pain that shot through his thigh, wrapped itself around his body like latex and clung like a leech, was so consuming that it bordered on pleasantry. The robotic wedge of man-made flesh had lodged itself into his leg after he had wasted one of the fuckers with a grenade, in what had been a victorious chapter in an otherwise losing war against the Machines. The joy young Johnny was experiencing at this moment was a result of his secret hope that the computer mind he housed in his bloody wound would somehow worm its way into his brain, and he could become one of Them, work his way up through the cyborg ranks and experience the opiate of pure triumph when the human had been fully subjugated by his legion of thinkalikes. Yeah he should be so lucky. He let the residue of the fantasy linger a while as he lifted his blue eyes to the shiny, majestic wreckage of steel, and debris that he once called home and the the hopelessness of it all seep in with controlled doses.

That’s the scene that Mind Over Matter create with sound, on their second full-length, Automanipulation. They do so with reverberating screams, atmospheric leads, and a guitar sound so thick you could only cut it with a precision laser. There is an adolescence that shows throughout, (as reflected by the companion piece of pulp sci-fi), which pegs them as hardcore, but what they lack in maturity and innovation they make up for with power.