Hailing from Southend and with claims of being the town's first punk rock band The Machines formed back in '77  and this, their debut album, has been issued with the inclusion of the 'True Life' EP which is apparently one of the top 100 most collectible punk records ever! 

Never mind it's collectability, is it any good? Well, yes and no! To be fair what you have is sixteen tracks of fairly standard UK punk drawing influences from all the usual suspects.

Amongst the sixteen there are some decent offerings such as the Johnny Thunders dedicated offering 'Girl In Black' and 'Perfect Black'. I like where they're coming from and the straight forward style. They've penned a whole bunch of songs like 'Chain Gang' which has the Thunders 'Just Another Girl' breakdown in the middle (not that there is anything wrong with that - Johnny was the best there was) but a lot of the songs are missing that something special to really lift them from the pack. Though songs like 'Parent Zone' up the tempo you can't help feeling these songs were penned way back in the day and hearing them sing such songs in the here and now loses some of the impact.
 
To be fair the tracks off 'True Life' deserve to be heard and have a genuine zip and energy in them: 'True Life' is the sound of a band with a mission and living the dream, sounding not a million miles away from SLF when they were good. Maybe it would have been better to release the EP with a few added bonus tracks from now rather than the other way round. 

An interesting release with a great booklet and some promising music but perhaps not quite enough this time.

www.the-machines.com