Matmos, “Metallic Life Review” (Thrill Jockey, 2025)
This latest release from the duo of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel is billed as a “compressed fast-forward of Matmos’ career with a sonic parade of the metallic objects from their lives,” as they attempted to mimic the psychological phenomenon of “life review” that people experience during near-death experiences, but quixotically decided to do it exclusively through metallic sound sources. Naturally, that constraint resulted in quite an eclectic and interesting instrumental palette that ranges from “pots and pans from each member’s childhood” to metal reels used in the recording of iconic early musique concrète pieces at Paris’s INA/GRM. Notably, however, this album is a bit less uncompromisingly purist than I expected, as the late Susan Alcorn contributed pedal steel to a couple of pieces (still technically metal though).
The album opens with one of its strongest pieces, as a gong-like crash kicks off a ritualistic percussion workout that sounds like the gamelan-inspired intro to a wild avant-metal album (albeit one that prominently features spaghetti bowls and cheese graters). Notably, it is also the first of two pieces featuring guest percussionist Thor Harris, so the metallic rhythm is an impressively intricate and virtuosic one, yet it is actually a creaky door that ultimately steals the show. Fittingly, the piece is entitled “Norway Doorway,” but I never would have guessed the source of the wild free-jazz sax wails otherwise. Harris returns once more for the following “Rust Belt,” which initially sounds like a free drummer going nuts in a well-stocked kitchen, but gradually blossoms into a sexy mutant disco groove enhanced with a host of spacy dub touches.
The following “Changing States” is centered around a languorously dream-like pedal steel exotica passage with twinkling xylophone melodies and clattering, skittering kitchen percussion, but loses me a bit once it erupts into a big distorted melody. Fortunately, “Steel Tongues” immediately won me back, as guest Owen Gardiner’s lovely glockenspiel melody evokes a ballet set in a clock tower-sized music box before the piece erupts into something resembling an industrial percussion remix of space age lounge music by a madman. The following “The Chrome Reflects Our Image” is similarly music box-adjacent due to its twinkling xylophone melody, but twists the formula with swooningly Romantic string swells (somehow conjured from a frying pan) and a twangy guitar melody from Jason Willett. Notably, that piece is fittingly dedicated to the late David Lynch, as the guitar melody sounds directly inspired by the Twin Peaks theme.
The final title piece fills the entire second half of the album and it is a bit of an outlier, as it was recorded live in the studio (apparently a first for the duo). I was not expecting it to be quite as strong as the album’s first half given how much editing and processing is involved in crafting music from non-musical sources, but I was pleasantly surprised by its shape-shifting journey. Over the course of twenty minutes or so, “Metallic Life Review” passes through a host of endearingly weird stages that evoke everything from “Whole Lotta Love” (minus Robert Plant’s hammy orgasm histrionics), wonky poly-rhythmic jungle exotica, an undersea orchestra performing the hits of Steve Reich, a ball bearing and theremin duet, and a dropped pots and pans solo. Notably, the sounds themselves are often beautifully crystalline or clangingly visceral, which makes for great headphone listening (especially fun if one is motivated to guess which sounds came from a chalice in an Italian castle, a nitrous oxide canister, Cyclobe’s house, or the gate of an underground crypt).
Unsurprisingly, all of the usual Matmos caveats apply with Metallic Life Review, as high art is continually colliding with playfully mischievous and wrong-footing intrusions of kitsch, chaos, and the cartoonishly absurd (listening to Matmos can sometimes feel like trying to ride a bucking bronco). The big one for me is usually the duo’s self-described “ADHD editing,” as Schmidt and Daniel gleefully and eclectically bounce from idea to idea like an over-caffeinated channel surfer. While that aspect admittedly threw me a bit with a couple of pieces, it irked me less than usual with this album, as the duo struck an unusually strong balance between listenability and their usual “anything goes” genre-defying experimentalism. In fact, this is instantly one of my favorite Matmos albums. It is also 100% destined to be one of the weirdest and wildest albums of the year.
Listen here.
