Album Review: Body Void – Atrocity Machine (Prosthetic Records)

Body Void return with their fourth studio album, Atrocity Machine, a six-track behemoth, and their second full-length to be released under the Prosthetic Records banner. Out on October 13th, 2023.

A constant revelation in heavy and abrasive brutality, Body Void are back, and they have a beast of an album to showcase. One still rooted in doom, but with so many layers of filth and noise that it’s barely recognisable. Yet, the combination of ferocity, frustration, and fanatical heaviness is so compelling. Putting it simply, Atrocity Machine is one of the nastiest things you’ll hear all year, but you’ll love every second of it.

A 29-second intro called Microwave sets the scene with palatable dread as the sense of being cooked alive builds. That leads into the crashing and smashing horror of Human Greenhouse where a grotesque combination of industrialised sludge, sickening noise, and soul sucking doom beats the mind into submission. It is a shocking showcase of coarse heaviness, and exceptionally interesting to hear.

It also happens to be the bar setter, yet is surpassed immediately by the uncomfortable, teeth-aching, and body-quivering doom sounds that Flesh Market offers up. The touches of blackened garishness really make this track sound like pure aural horror.

Violence is inherent in the Atrocity Machine sound, and nowhere is that more evident than with Cop Show. A track that speaks about the commercialisation of fear and violence being turned into a spectacle. It’s a corrosive track that seeps into the soul, blackening the senses, filling the mind with darkness, and delivering putridity on a scale not heard yet. It’s doom, but doom at its heftiest and roughest.

Few bands would be able to top that, but Body Void are on fine form here. Coming up with even more purifying ferocity on Divine Violence, the first of two tracks that pass the ten-minute mark. A track that puts the stamp on the future direction of Body Void as their use of electronica to enhance the horror is so prominent here. It’s easy to say that there’s nothing quite as devastating as this track, but there’s still one more before this album ends.

That finale is the title track and as suffocating as things have been so far, the shroud that wraps around the mind here, is something else. It’s a grim and garish closing track that leaves you gasping for breath. A track that leaves you wandering in the darkness, deafened by the appalling sounds that surround you, and all hope of escape slowing dissipating.

Body Void have left a mark that will stay for a long time afterwards.

Body Void – Atrocity Machine Track Listing:

1. Microwave
2. Human Greenhouse
3. Flesh Market
4. Cop Show
5. Divine Violence
6. Atrocity Machine

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