Somewhere in the mists of rock n’roll history, the San Francisco duo Chrome were lost in the nether regions between industrial and punk. Chrome were as chilling as Suicide yet with the napalm streak common to the Stooges. Their woozy synths and overdriven guitars launch an assault on your synapses. Where other bands knowingly create narrative that scream “science fiction” – Chrome is content to make that their chilling reality. In addition, they not only scream it – they moan it, croon it, whisper it and take it to blinding extremes on the newly reissued Half Machine Lip Moves.
“TV As Eyes” is a classic. A gut punch of a song that begins with a grinding pick slide and ends with synth madness. Between those wild sounds, their main riff is the sonic equivalent of blunt force trauma. Even more chilling and strangely catchy is “March of the Chrome Police (A Cold Clammy Bombing).” Without the layers of doom and gloom, this would be a Jam song. However, once Damon Edge and Helios Creed lay into the groove – it becomes apocalyptic.
Maybe that was the difference between Chrome and the other punk bands. Devo mixed their nihilism with overt commercialism. Chrome descends to terra incognita and never looks back. Songs grind to a halt around TV samples and strange, disconcerting loops and sounds. Half Machine Lip Moves is by no means a comfortable record.Â
“You’ve Been Duplicated” is beyond chilling, it freezes. The vocals are barely audible forcing you to strain to listen. As you concentrate more, the spiraling mass of sounds and stop/starts blows a synapse or two. “Zombie Warfare (Can’t Let You Down)” is a fiercely muscular instrumental and more than likely the song that led someone in Warner Bros. A&R to turn it off and label their music as “a messed up Doors album.” Even when they slow down on the beginning of the musique concrete piece “Mondo Anthem”, they maintain a frightening level of menace. While the swirling title track is just one whip crack from madness.
Edge and Creed make some of the most interesting sounds committed to record during the punk heyday. Their guitars are constantly pinching notes off. They squeal through junk shop stomp boxes and Creed grinds his riffs mercilessly. Edge’s drumming is urgent. While it all sounds like tin cans compared to Bill Price’s engineering of The Sex Pistols or even the ferocity Don Gallucci captured on Fun House, there is something revelatory about randomly overdubbed voices bellow over their songs.
Their sound is smeary. When they take lo-fi to the extreme you cannot tell the synths from the guitars and the sheets of distortion and noise make your hair stand on end. Away from the production, these songs are blistering. “Duplicated” would make a hell of a Queens of the Stone Age cover. The dangerously slow vocals in the opening of “Abstract Nympho” predict the weirdness of Butthole Surfers (including Paul Leary’s acid-fried soloing).
The stranger the album becomes, the more you may not be able to turn it off. Edge and Creed are clearly studied in their madness. At the root of most of their compositions is one consistent drum part (sometimes played by their drum machine credited as John L.Cyborg). Above that Creed’s guitars play tricks on your ears. The side two massacre that leads to Edge warbling nonsense and “Zombies” in “Creature Eternal” features loops of Creed’s guitar bouncing around in what sounds like a ring modulator. The sonic result is disassociation. Once you are unsettled, then Edge takes over hyperactively mixing the most random elements in and out making these so-called Alien Soundtracks terribly frightening.
Given their upcoming move to more tracks, Half Machine Lip Moves is Chrome at their most disjointed. As their sound becomes sleeker, they will trade in some of the chaos for longer grooves. However, nothing compares to listening to these Moves either in part or entirely.Â
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