Bristol’s art punk powerhouse, Phlegmonade, salved glitched-out minds with the surealist distortion in ‘Ode to a Machine’ –

Phlegmonade isn’t a band name you’d want to pronounce after a few pints, but you’ll want them on your radar after their latest single, Ode to a Machine. The Bristol-based art-punk provocateurs didn’t hold back when they turned their debut into a snarling, unrelenting barrage of garagey skate punk, injected with enough chaos to rip the soul clean from its technocratic casing. It’s a full-throttle blitz of fuzz-drenched fury that cuts through algorithmic apathy with serrated hooks and seething rhythmic momentum.

As the hypersonically twisted guitars oscillate around frenetic percussive blasts, the only reprieve from the onslaught is the occasional wave of woozy psych rock, bleeding colour into the white hot brutality. It’s an adrenaline shot of no-wave-esque distortion, and it carries enough mental static to grind your internal cogs into a blissfully dysfunctional haze.

Through the track’s raw instrumental assault, the metaphor of the mind and body as a faltering vehicle is delivered with abrasive, unflinching sincerity. You feel every rattling piston and spiralling feedback loop of the sonically visualised psychological collapse. And from that wreckage, Phlegmonade resurrects something oddly tender. Something that says: love the malfunction, embrace the glitch.

Drawing from years in the studio and band members scattered from Ireland to Italy to Bristol, Phlegmonade have alchemised a sound that sits somewhere between philosophical subversion and gleefully absurd destruction. Ode to a Machine is the first hit of what’s sure to be a mind fuck of a legacy.

Ode to a Machine is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast