The Chrome Box

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Total Tracks: 55   Total Length: 230:53

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Christopher R. Weingarten

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Christopher R. Weingarten is a freelance music writer living in Brooklyn, whose work can currently be seen in The Village Voice, Spin, Revolver, NYLON, and much...more »

04.22.11
Pioneering industrial rockers Chrome unleash their incendiary clang & roll.
2003 | Label: Cleopatra Records / The Orchard

Chrome embraced industrial music's grating mechanical squeals, bowel-loosening rumbles, garbled tape loops and metallic bangs, but the San Francisco duo took them out of the art house and made them rock. Using melodies straight out of the Stooges 'Fun House, Chrome flailed and clawed against garbage can percussion straight out of Einstürzende Neubauten's decaying Germany. The first six tracks of The Chrome Box are from 1979's Alien Soundtracks, and the following ten are from 1979's Half Machine Lip Moves — two landmark industrial-tinged aggro-rock albums that set the stage for more streamlined machine-heads like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails.

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You call me cannibal, you call me pygmy...

deadrose

Still as tastily disturbing as the day I first heard them in 1980, and so good to re-own it after so long.

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Yeah

meat-head

Definitely start with Half Machine Lip Moves if you don't know where to start. Otherwise, man, I dunno Chrome is AWESOME.

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essential

music-listener

this is a great collection of a group that has grown in recognition over the years. How did they live 30 years in the future? The only criticism would be that if cleopatra can release this they must be able to release the original albums complete. Chronicles 1 and 2 anyone?

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essential

music-listener

this is a great collection of a group that has grown in recognition over the years. How did they live 30 years in the future? The only criticism would be that if cleopatra can release this they must be able to release the original albums complete. Chronicles 1 and 2 anyone?

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Make room on your hard drive!

USAtheist

Originally issued as an exhaustive four-cd set and now criminally out-of-print, this is a must-hear/own classic comp of the band that pretty much "invented" industrial. All but one song from Chrome's best album, "Half Machine Lip Moves" is included, and unbelievably there's hardly a dull moment elsewhere. So start deleting some of that porn from your hard drive and get this now!

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Deleted? Not for you people

Prova

Deleted? Rare? Second hand? Nope. Right here direct to you. Fiercely uncommercial. Uncompromising. Seminal(!). Great stuff.

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Slip it to the Android!

JeanPoole

One of those "yeah, but when they're good!" bands, this is a very handy overlong overview of this strange and sleazy bunch. Like the music playing in scenes in 1980's 'futuristic' sci-fi films like Total Recall, but actually really odd and crazy good. RIP Damon Edge.

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Half Machine Not Beast

JonBonJon

Chrome's album Half Machine Lip Moves (tracks 7 through 16) is their masterpiece of cut-up space punk, and it should be heard in sequence to appreciate just how jarring and otherworldly the transitions are from song to song. The production (by band member Damon Edge) is unlike anything else that was being done at the time, and Helios Creed's guitar playing is wild. "Meet You in the Subway" is one of Chrome's best rock songs.

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They Say All Media Guide

Those made of money who want to go ahead and take the plunge into full Chrome activity could do worse than to go straight to Chrome Box. The original release of the Box in 1982 served as both an overview of the classic Damon Edge/Helios Creed lineup and the inclusion of some extra goodies. Four previously released albums appeared in full — Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, Blood on the Moon, and the compilation No Humans Allowed. Also included were Chronicles and Chronicles, Vol. 2, containing what at the time was unreleased material from the band; those two collections were made available separately later. Many years later, after Chrome had been reactivated by Creed following Edge’s untimely passing, the band’s new label, Cleopatra, continued its own sporadic reissue program with a full reprint and remastering of the Chrome Box as a three-CD set. This version also has the advantage of including the three Chrome tracks from the Subterranean Modern compilation on Ralph Records from 1979. These include a rather devolved version of “(I Left My Heart) in San Francisco,” which was specifically essayed by every other band on the original compilation as well. – Ned Raggett

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