Sounds of Mass Production: Coda

-a noun

1. A more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.

2. A kick ass musical composition by Sounds of Mass Production, featuring Jason Bazinet, and a nod to everything that was great about industrial music in the mid to late nineties when Wax Trax Records ruled goth and industrial clubs everywhere.

Jason Bazinet has seen and heard it all in the music industry. Over the past fifteen years he has managed to release five full length records, and recorded and/or performed with members of KMFDM, 16 Volt, Christ Analogue, Chemlab, and Front Line Assembly, and many others. He has also remixed many of the luminaries in the scene, including Mindless Faith, Razed in Black, and Collide. He has had the experience of being on a music label, but now he enjoys releasing new Sounds of Mass Production albums directly from his own label based in Seattle, Music Ration Entertainment, which was founded after Bazinet left the Martin Atkins seminal industrial records label, Invisible Records, in the earlier part of the 21^st Century. CODA, is the Sounds of Mass Production's most recent album, and the 4^th effort to see the light of day for Music Ration Entertainment.

CODA was born from a combination of Bazinet's inability to stop creating music, and the fervent support of SMP's most hardcore fans who kept prodding Bazinet to create more music after had declared Sounds of Mass Production dead after his last release, Pissing on the Legacy. The result is the the 3^rd collaboration with producer Wade Alin (of Christ Analogue, that hits the ground screaming at 88.8 miles per hour the moment you hit play. While the album is short in duration at nearly 36 minutes, it is filled to the brim with industrialized bliss. Stripped away, CODA is an album about personal suffering, perseverance, and progress. It reminds us to stay true to the core values of compassion, dignity, and humility, even when circumstances are most difficult, and life is far from comfortable. Critics could say that Bazinet is simply returning to the tropes that industrial music and hip hop have always mined, but I think that would be over-simplifying the record. CODA, is a triumphant return to the glory days of mid-nineties industrial rock.

William Gibson may have coined the phrase cyberpunk, but Jason Bazinet practically defined the term in its musical form over the last decade. Were you ever a fan to the throwback sound of Wax Trax records when bands like Ministry, Sister Machine Gun, and KMFDM were the focal points of the scene? Well, prepare to slide on those Doc Marten boots for some great stomping because that is the feel and sound that oozes from each track on CODA.

The message is never more clearer than in the defiant first track "Stay Sick" which is clearly Bazinet's extension of his middle finger to the privatized healthcare and the pharmaceutical models in the United States that does not provide incentives for those in healthcare to cure disease, but rather to treat the symptoms of disease, because of course, that is FAR more profitable. "Stay Sick" first found the ears of fans when it was released on the Electronic Saviors: Industrial Music to Cure Cancer compilation in February 2010 from Metropolis Records on behalf of cancer research. Included on CODA is a chilled remix of "Stay Sick" by 64K that appropriately helps you calm your ass down at the conclusion of CODA.

The second track, "Run" is the perfect marriage of hip hop and industrial music, and features verses by industrial icons Ned Kirby (of Stromkern) and Dee Madden (of Penal Colony). It is the kind of track you expect to hear pounding out behind the rolling end credits of a sinister sci-fi or horror film.. Chris DeMarcus (of Stiff Valentine) tears it up with the guitar and Bazinet doesn't disappoint lyrically, as he rips each layer of society off, until he exposes the its core, before issuing a decree to run for your life. It is a classic fist pounding, industrial anthem.

As a longtime ongoing member of The Crills, a band that exclusively performs covers of old school punk rock, Bazinet has continued the tradition of including a cover of a punk classic that helped to define what industrial music became , as he had on the previous Sounds of Mass Production releases Crimes of the Future (2004), and The Treatment (2007). The lucky gem in this case is the classic Circle Jerks song, "Paid Vacation", from their legendary 1980 debut album Group Sex. This version doesn't feel forced like some covers often do. It sounds unmistakably like a Sounds of Mass Production song, but it also feels natural, as if this was the way that the song should have always been recorded.

The other highlights on the album are "Anna's Song", "Corporate Lunch" (which is sort of a third in a trilogy that began as "Corporate Culture" that appeared on 2004's Crimes of the Future, and "Corporate Freak" on 2007's The Treatment), and "The Knife", which is pure post-apocalyptic cyberpunk terror. Seriously, it feels like a run through the shadows of some unforgiving cyberpunk landscape, as megacorp goons send shells whistling past your ears.

CODA, may be defined as more or less an end of a composition or passage, but I sincerely hope that this release will serve instead for Sounds of Mass Production as a creative genesis for the next phase in the evolution of the band. But, if this really is truly the end of Sounds of Mass Production, then CODA is a worthy album to go out on.

I highly recommend you try it out. You can hear clips of the songs at CDBaby, iTunes, and Amazon.com

Sounds of Mass Production official site: http://www.smphq.com

CODA: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/smp7

Circle Jerks - Group Sex: http://www.amazon.com/Group-Sex-Circle-Jerks/dp/B000008EBJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289336072&sr=8-1

64K

website: www.64konline.com

Wade Alin of Christ Analogue

website: www.christanalogue.com