"Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-George Santayana
The above quotation was written in 1905 by the Spanish-American writer and philosopher, George Santayana and was originally published in his book, The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress. The now popular aphorism was later immortalized when it was inscribed on a plaque at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland. As the name suggests, the museum is on the site of one of the most infamous death camps used by the Nazis in the systematic extermination of over a million Jews.
Thirty-plus years later a derivation of that poignant quote was also carefully and measuredly stenciled onto a hand-painted sign, nailed to the interior of a wooden pavilion in the stifling jungles of Guyana. It hung above a whitewashed wooden chair where a pill-fucked, slurred-mouthed, intoxicated Jim Jones convinced over nine-hundred people to commit a mass act of "revolutionary suicide." Just like the Holocaust memorial plaques in Europe, the South American sign inadvertently became the epitaph to a historic tragedy.
Both iterations of the Santayana citation are found in the wake of some of the world's darkest offenses, yet hold separate connotations based on the intent of the persons who mounted them.
Both iterations of the Santayana citation are found in the wake of some of the world's darkest offenses, yet hold separate connotations based on the intent of the persons who mounted them.
I'm not really sure where I was going with this. Sometimes these are just streams of consciousness, you know? However, I do remember thinking about the progression of society and mankind as a whole. It seems like things can only advance so far before they inevitably take a massive step backwards.
I was recently having a cursory discussion about studio engineering with a work buddy and he brought up the growing prevalence of AI in music recording: AI-powered mixing and mastering, intelligent effects processing, instrument-less songs, musician-less bands, blah-blah-blah. The results being a modern form of extreme music that is so sterile and polished that it sounds overtly synthetic. Enter Malicious Algorithm.
Malicious Algorithm are that massive step backwards—at least in the terms of modern production worship and traditional musical sensibilities. The powerviolence/grindcore band from Humboldt County, California initially formed at the tail end of 2019 as a two-piece before releasing their 2020 four-track demo, TransubstantiationOfHumanFleshIntoCyberneticCircuitboardInterface. TransubstantiationOfHumanFleshIntoCyberneticCircuitboardInterface was a mince-drenched, chaotic clamour of blast beats, blaring cymbal peaks and overlaid arguing. You know, typical demo tape stuff.
By the band's 2021 first full-length, Gorgon Stare, Malicious Algorithm had filled out as a proper quartet and released an album of more traditional sounding powerviolence. Vocals were cleaner and snotty hardcore punk breaks ran throughout the record.
In 2023 the band released a split with Agathocles that saw the band returning to the hairier and noisier sound from their original demo and forging the band's present brand of noisy grindcore.
Last year's Progress full-length comes some four years and five releases after TransubstantiationOfHumanFleshIntoCyberneticCircuitboardInterface and is easily the most blown out and fuzzed-out album I've heard in a long time.
Malicious Algorithm's Progress is obviously a commentary on current technological politics, cybersecurity and the implication of the ethics of AI use. From the looks of the cover art, the song titles and the band's name, I think I'm safe in assuming that it's all of a dubious, tech-averse vantage.
Progress is tonally and sonically the band's best effort to date. The album boasts a huge low end that distorts the riffs in a sizzle of gain and overdrive. Progress plays like it's filtered through a torn speaker cone played at max volume. Intentionally muddied and grimed, Malicious Algorithm aren't concerned with any sort of pomp or polish. Songs are calamitous and ugly, marred with vocal fry and blast beats, but in the best ways. The band's three pronged vocals and tumbling instrumentation is still as tight as one would expect from cymbal choking powerviolence.
The band includes a heavy Dystopia styled sludge-crust influence on Progress, especially on the A side. Tracks like, "When You Die In the Metaverse, You Die In Real Life," "Executed For Time Theft," and "Loose Screw" really emphasize the band's slow paced sludge stylings. And to be honest, I found these segments to be a tad bit tedious. The juxtaposition of blasting-fast and glacially-slow is nothing new in grindcore and is par for the course with powerviolence, yet these down tempo tracks on Progress aren't my favorite. Fortunately, most of the previously mentioned tracks tend to speed up towards their conclusions, and the album seems to pick up towards its second half.
Malicious Algorithm's current sludge-scuzzed, crust punk caked mix of powerviolence and grindcore is what I wish Man Is The Bastard sounded like rather than what Man Is The Bastard actually sounds like.
Malicious Algorithm are part of the current down and dirty grindcore scene that's blistering out of California right now. The band and their latest cassette tape are an aggressively caustic and manic assault of techno-dystopianism grindcore channeled through the white noise of television snow. The heavy bass and brash equalization clipping when mixed with the rabid vocal delivery and tumultuously bloodied instrumentalization makes for a whiplashed tempoed release. The music might be low-fi, but it's still a tight, heavy and concussive brand of grinding powerviolence.
FFO: Dystopia, Gowl, Violent Gorge
Listen to the album: https://maliciousalgorithm.bandcamp.com/album/progress
