Imagine a heavy metal version of The Road Warrior, starring Lemmy as Mad Max and Toxic Holocaust’s Joel Grind as Lord Humungus. This is exactly what Children of Technology sound like on their debut full length, It’s Time to Face the Doomsday (henceforth referred to ITTFTD). It’s a post-apocalyptic cross between crust punk and thrash/speed metal that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but does cause massive amounts of headbanging.
I’ve been listening to this album for some time, having ordered the ultra-sweet “nuclear green” cassette version from Terror From Hell (I unearthed my wife’s old stereo and was on a bit of a cassette kick) well before Hells Headbangers released the compact disc last October. There is something oddly appropriate about the tape format for ITTFTD. One can imagine the mohawked motorcycle warriors of the aforementioned Mad Max films blasting this thing on junkyard salvage boomboxes while out on a petrol raid. Also, the album sounds like just the sort of rough ‘n’ ready crossover thrash that would’ve spread faster than a herpes outbreak at a Poison concert via the tape-trading heyday of the ’80s (but without being self-consciously retro, natch).
The Motorhead influence is palpable here, especially in Deathlord Astolfi’s sub-humanoid vocals, but also in the sense of desperation and urgency Children of Technology convey on tracks like “No Fuel… No Hope!!” and “No Man’s Land” (dig that fucking bassline!). Much like early Motorhead, Children of Technology go for the throat like a pack of hungry wild dogs, bridging the gap between punk and metal with a musical attack that’s raw and aggressive yet catchy as all hell. Of course, Children of Technology aren’t the ground-breakers that Lemmy and Co. were during the mid-to-late ’70s, but the spirit of that legendary band lives on in them. The Italian quartet could very well be the product of some bizarre experiment involving the corroded electronic guts of a Rickenbacker bass and DNA obtained from one of Lemmy’s warts.
It’s Time to Face the Doomsday ain’t all Overkill and Bomber worship though. Children of Technology have obviously taken a few lessons from the likes of Discharge and Amebix. The disc crackles with instrumental intensity and a fistful of “fuck you” attitude that could have only been derived from the early kingpins of crust. It is telling that these bands were products of horrendously shitty political and economic circumstances, similar to what we’re facing today. Indeed, Children of Technology are further proof that hard times breed great punk and metal, while prosperous times breed bullshit (i.e. nu metal, metalcore, etc), but that’s a whole other article unto itself.
Children of Technology aren’t going to win any points for originality, but they more than make up for it with a batch of memorable songs and a take-no-prisoners approach to the crusty, thrashing mayhem they create. If you’re looking for a soundtrack to celebrate the impending economic collapse and subsequent nuclear apocalypse, you could do a whole hell of a lot worse than It’s Time to Face the Doomsday.
