One of the many things I love about the musical output of Victor Love is that it never ceases to amaze me what one man and his computer can get up to. It’s like that quote from Doctor Who, only instead of a boy and his box, it’s a boy and his hardware. One of the trademarks of MBR from the very beginning has been producing music that you keep having to remind yourself is entirely computer generated, because whatever you think computer generated metal sounds like, I can pretty much guarantee that it’s not what MBR sound like.
For the uninitiated, Master Boot Record is one of the many solo projects of Victor Love, who was previously the founder, lead singer and principal song writer of Dope Stars Inc., and quite possibly the biggest nerd in metal. After Dope Stars went on (presumably permanent) hiatus in the 2010s, Love essentially retreated into his hard drive and started making completely computer generated, “entirely dehumanised” music under various names. The most famous (although I do use the term somewhat loosely – this is all rather niche, even for metal) being Master Boot Record and Keygen Church. The two share a lot of common ground, with the main difference being that Keygen Church is where Love’s Italian Catholic heritage (and all the pomp and circumstance that goes with that) combine with a healthy dose of gothic melodrama to bring forth what he describes as “computer generated ceremony”. It’s powerful, ritualistic music, that paints pictures of the highest of high church ceremonial pageantry: and it’s all straight out of a computer. Even the duelling organs are computer generated.
[If this appeals, the last Keygen Church album, Nel Nome Del Codice was released earlier this year, and I also reviewed it for Ave Noctum, having apparently been designated the resident Victor Love fanatic.]
Master Boot Record has no such narrow confines though, and plays with whatever Love was interested in when he wrote each album, so there’s no overarching theme like there is with Keygen Church, which can be a double-edged sword sometimes. It has a lot more freedom to explore different genres and ideas without being hemmed in by a theme or concept, but it also doesn’t have the focal point that Keygen Church has, which can make Master Boot Record albums a little unfocused and/or repetitive sometimes. My own personal take on the early albums in particular is that while I love Master Boot Record as a vibe, I tend to put entire albums or playlists on, rather than pulling out and listening to individual tracks, because for the most part, individual tracks don’t really stand out. This has gradually changed over time, with individual tracks starting to become more than simply part of a larger core (this is particularly noticeable from Internet Protocol onwards for me, your mileage may vary). There’s also been a shift from fairly pure – if avant-garde – chiptune, to focusing on synthesising individual instruments, and creating the effect of a full synthesised band. I can’t seriously imagine Victor or Master Boot Record ever actually leaving chiptune behind entirely (I can’t say I’d want them to either), but the vibe more recently has been of an actual band playing, playing with, and occasionally being steamrollered by chiptune, rather than just fairly straight chiptune like it was back in 2016.
So, Master Boot Record, like all good musical projects, is evolving, but even in the context of an evolving project, Hardwarez is something a bit different. There’s even more going on here than usual, more musical reference points than I can keep straight in my head, it explores more genres than you can shake a stick at, and it pretty much picks up exactly where the last Keygen Church album left off.
What, what?
Yeah, if you’re up to date with Victor’s output, it’s really, really obvious that at least some of this was written during or not long after Nel Nome Del Codice (Keygen Church), which was released back in March. There’s even a nice bit of organ at the beginning of track one (BIOS), to ease you in slowly to the album. It’s more subtle and spread out after that first track, but it’s there. Not complaining about this in the slightest, just saying.
As for the rest of the album, it doesn’t really come off as an album, so much as Victor showing you all the things he’s figured out how to synthesise. You could basically call it “look what I can do”, and it may or may not already be called that in my head. It’s like he’s been set a series of arcane challenges, and Hardwarez is the results. Like what would happen if you took the bridge from a 90s eurodance track, a big Handel-esque chorus, and turned it into a chiptune earworm? Track four, GPU. What about Sky Chase Zone from Sonic 2, only instead of Sonic and Tails on a plane, it’s a metal band on a plane, facing off with a processor? Track two, MOBO. Hard pivot between power-ish and thrash with no actual guitars in sight? Track 5, RAM. And so on. The end result is a dense, mad, whirling hailstorm of synths and whatever was on Victor’s mind when he made it, and I almost struggle with the idea that it’s possible to start with an empty file and create something like Hardwarez essentially out of a processor and fresh air. It’s all a bit MacGyver, honestly.
In this sense I feel like this is more of a showpiece than an album, because whatever direction I take with this review, I end up at the conclusion that this is a flex. And not only because of the sheer breadth of things that Victor and his hardware/z can now do – there are also entire passages (such as in track 8, PSU) that I genuinely struggle to believe are entirely computer generated. They are, obviously, I’m not insinuating that Victor Love is somehow the Milli Vanilli of niche metal, but it is really hard to get your head round it in places. And the thing is, being 100% dehumanised/synthesised has always been the thing with Master Boot Record and Keygen Church – it’s their joint main selling point in fact – so synthesising to a level where it sounds entirely convincing isn’t about fooling anyone, it’s just in there because he can do it. So again, there’s that element of showing off.
And when I say showing off, I don’t mean that in the sense of “I’m better than you because I can do X”. It’s more the kind of demonstration you get from someone who’s spent every waking hour working on something they love for years, and you’ve just asked them “so how are you getting on with that thing?”. The kind of detailed explanation and demonstration that might have you edging towards the door after five hours because they’re “just getting started”. Not that I’m also a total nerd who’s done much the same thing to unsuspecting individuals or anything, but it er…takes one to know one, eh?
Speaking of which, varying levels of nerdery does seem to be the defining factor in how well people get on with Master Boot Record in my experience, which means I’ve had to review it a little differently. By this point I’ve usually drawn parallels between the album of the week and umpteen other artists that lurk in similar corners of metal, which should be fairly straightforward because there are indeed more musical references and genres in here than you can shake a stick at, but trying to pin down other artists that sound like this isn’t really the point here. Problem is, Master Boot Record is just so bloody singular as a project that the thought of spending 41 minutes listening to the many and varied things Victor Love can now do really, really well with a computer either excites you, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, that’s fair – this isn’t for everyone by any means.
If it does, however, then first and foremost it’s a Master Boot Record (albeit with some bleed-through from Keygen Church), it’s mad and glorious and masterful on multiple levels, it’s a fairly logical progression from Personal Computer, and it might just be the nerdiest flex of Victor Love’s career to date.
(9/10 Ellie)
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