Body the Blood the Machine

The Thermals | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 22, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sub Pop
• ASIN: B000G1TOTG
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,735 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Venus

(it) still has that nervous, high energy, but it's a lot more focused and even, say, linear. - (Sujan Hong-Raphael)

With artful power-pop-punk ballads, this hyper-intense trio explodes with a fury..the legitimacy of The Thermals is uncompromised. - (W.T. Wallace)

Product Description

With a wider, brighter, and wilder sound than anything they've done in the past, this record adds walls of guitars, organs, and even a few "ballads" (a.k.a. slightly pretty songs) to the mix, while still retaining the gritty post-pop-punk sound for which they're globally famous. Recorded in the band's hometown of Portland, OR by Fugazi's Brendan Canty.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Profoundly Spiritual Work, February 8, 2007

By 

Robert Wise - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Body the Blood the Machine (Audio CD)

I expect little from most pop/punk/indie music except the usual: boo hoo I lost my girl friend or my friend takes drugs. The Thermals third album -- while almost as flaming as the other two -- adds layers and layers of symbolism and meaning.

You really have to buy the CD or find a source for the lyrics. You know something is up when you see a picture of Jesus on the cover with clouds, machine parts, and the earth in the background. The spirit of the album is essentially the search for meaning while in a mechanistic, military, and materialist culture.

Here is the song cycle:

1. here's your future -- Addresses the essential question of what is a just god and can we trust god to do more than make us fear.

2. I might need you to kill -- Addresses the same issues as The Clash's Clampdown -- the way institutional religion and economic structures dehumanize the individual and force us to lose our humane values.

3. An ear for baby -- Is the inner fear that we all will feel when we are dictated to or controlled -- very similar feel to the opening scene of Apple's original Super Bowl ad for the McIntosh -- but without the positive resolution.

4. a pillar of salt -- musically this is my favorite song. In the Bible Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt for her sins. Lyrically it an incredible assault on the idea of god as separate from the human realm and the nature of sin is caused simply by our being human. You can almost feel his baby slipping away and turning to salt.

5. returning to the fold -- Is about the fear of not being "saved" and the ambiguity we all feel about our inner being and its relationship to the senses. Reminds me a little bit of the Buddhist Heart Sutra -- no eyes, no ears, no tongue, no body, no mind...

6. test pattern -- Is about whether we have the ability to make the existentail choice to chose our own spiritual life or not.

7. st. rosa and the swallows -- Incredible. Holding St. Rosa (Portland's flower) is holding close to your true self, your love, your community of fellow beings.

8. Back to the sea -- Returning to the sea is the Jungian equivalent of returning to god. We crawl from the sea for our individuation and we crawl or fall back to the sea our primal self.

9. power doesn't run on nothing -- This is the heart of the machine that runs on blood and money -- the very reality that we fear the most -- dehumanized and far from the life of the spirit.

10. i hold the sound -- In many spiritual traditions -- the Word is God -- and the sound is the access point to the sprit even in death.

This is far beyond the usual pabulum passed off as pop music. The Thermals are worth studying as well as listening to the sound. I recommend reading The Rebel by Albert Camus to understand rebellion that runs this deep.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best album of 2006?, December 28, 2006

By 

Y. Feng "tryptophan" (Austin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Body the Blood the Machine (Audio CD)

In a word...yes.

The Body, the Blood, the Machine is not an album that grabs you from the get go, but once it gets its hooks into you, you'll be coming back to it over and over.

It's true, the lyrics have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but then this music isn't meant to be subtle. It's a hard rockin', do-it-yourself indie masterpiece. Listeners of Rush Limbaugh stay away, the Thermals have just dropped an a-bomb of an album.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Our God's the Richest, February 1, 2007

By 

Grant Alexander (Albuquerque) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Body the Blood the Machine (Audio CD)

An outstanding album from the first elongated organ cord, held for a moment before the guitar starts; The guitar is given a moment by itself to breath before the drums tumble in with Hutch, as he yells `Here's your future!' Bedlam and bitter, bitter sarcasm well up together, and overflow at 1:43 with that guitar line that sounds so good it might be impossible not to pump your fist at least a few times.

And there are many other superlative tracks (really there isn't a weak song here) allowing one the freedom to choose the three of four tracks that speak most powerfully to them, out of the 7 or 8 excellent songs on the album. Power Doesn't Run on Nothing is the dark, caustic heart of the album. From when The Beat first rolls over one minute and half in, until Hutch tells us its not fair and we don't care a little over a minute later; that has to be the purest minute and a half of rock produced in a long time.

I still enjoy the first two Thermals albums, and might have enjoyed them more if there been a bigger gap before discovering this album. It feels structured, lyrically dense, and complete in a way the earlier albums can't touch. One can't help but feel that `Body, Blood and Machine' sounds exactly like the band wanted it to sound. As good a rock album as our new century has seen.