Hailing from France, No Return hope to carve their own niche in the (European) metal scene through their latest release, Machinery. After releasing six albums on small labels in the past ten years, Nuclear Blast signed the band to give them the opportunity to reach a larger audience. The label info states that No Return plays thrash metal and this pretty much sums things up. The music is fast and aggressive with a lot of double bass drumming and almost hardcore-like vocals. Most songs have short blast beats or Slayer-ish breakdowns to provide some musical variation and during these breakdowns, the sample guy gets to do his thing, which varies from weird beeps to doomy keyboard. Unfortunately (for the poor keyboard player mostly), the keyboards are mostly mixed to the background, so you really have to give it a good listen to hear them in the first place.

Otherwise, the record sounds good and the band shows some good musicianship; the songs are al done really well and everyone plays their instrument well, although I especially like the drummer’s creativity. After a while, the songs start to sound a bit the same (I also suspect the band of having put their best songs up front), so my attention kinda slipped at the end of the album, but altogether this release isn’t bad at all. No lyrics included in this promo-copy so I can’t give any extra information on them, although I’m already pretty sure they mixed up the order of the songs. Bastards…