“Feed the Machine” by Red, Monday, October 28, 2024
When Red's producer Rob Graves posted on Twitter a picture of a note on Red's guitars tuned to "A#, A, and G," some fans thought that the band's third album would be heavy. The band experimented with recording on the road during their whirlwind touring schedule from their second album Innocence & Instinct, arranging hotel mattresses to create a makeshift studio. For their third album, the band brought a portable case that unfolded into a mini recording studio. When waiting for a show to start at the venue, the band could flesh out ideas, many of which came from their former guitarist Jasen Rauch, who had stopped touring with the band to take a job closer to his family. Rauch remained a member of Red until he joined Breaking Benjamin in 2014. Rauch contributed guitar parts which the rest of the band built songs around for their February 2011 album Until We Have Faces.
YOU MUSTN'T DISAPPOINT THEM. Red’s third album takes its name from the 1956 C. S. Lewis novel Till We Have Faces. The band delivered a more cohesive, harder rock sound than previous efforts with songs like "Faceless," the album's opener "Feed the Machine," and "Lie to Me" (Denial). A theme the band explored in the album’s lyrics about finding one’s identity, particularly in the singles “Faceless” and “Feed the Machine” as well as the album’s closer “Hymn for the Missing.” The hard rock opener “Feed the Machine” sets a heavy tone for the album, venturing away from symphonic, classical composition—though composition and strings do finish the song and make appearances on the album. Until We Have Faces tightens the templates from the band’s first two albums, deepening their commitment to hard rock. The heavy guitar guitars and lead singer Michael Barnes’ scream give the songs a renewed energy lacking in the two previous albums.
GO BACK TO SLEEP. In “Feed the Machine,” Until We Have Faces’ second single, Red constructs the “machine” as a metaphor for oppressive systems or societal pressures that demand conformity and submission. The accompanying music video sees the band members and others as part of a world in which people are plugged into a machine that transforms them into soulless soldiers. If soldiers become lucid, they are sedated until once again compliant. The metaphor of the machine is a trope in rock music, often referring to governments, corporations, or specific industries, like in Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine,” targeting the exploitative practices of the music business. Red’s Christian rock background uses an unexplained faceless machine as a possible metaphor for the worldly structures Christians war against. The song is vague enough to allow listeners to attach their own meaning and angry enough to lead listeners to the front line of their own causes!
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