MAQUINA. - Body Transmission

MAQUINA., a Lisbon trio made up of Halison Peres (drums/vocals), José “Mendy” Rego (bass) and João Cavalheiro (guitar/effects), have built their reputation on one promise: a live show that leaves you breathless, drenched in sweat, alive. Over two hundred and fifty shows in two years, festivals across Europe, a Kexp session and a Brazilian tour. With “BODY TRANSMISSION”, their second album, they've done the only thing a band like this could do: they've bottled that fury without watering it down.

The album follows “PRATA” (2024), a record that thrived on improvisation and jams stretching past the ten-minute mark. For this third chapter, the band took the opposite route, recording, cutting and reassembling, turning their sonic digressions into three- or four-minute shards. The result is a record that gives no quarter: forty-five minutes of noise-rock, motorik metal and industrial-punk built to smash through the wall of sound.
The opener “Dança” (featuring Viktor L. Crux of Dame Area on synths and Silvia Kostance on vocals) is a sharp jab: chugging guitar, an endless beat and a voice pressing forward relentlessly - practically a mission statement. “4 To The Floor”, on the other hand, arrives as a hypnotic groove, unmistakably dancefloor rock - basically techno played with guitars.

But MAQUINA. also know when to hit hard: “Collapsing” is a track steeped in Nine Inch Nails, with an industrial tension that builds up until it explodes into a lethal chorus, while “Agony” is the album's most political track, taking aim at the rhetoric of power in a song that sounds like it crawled out of a sonic trench. “Bizarro” is the most visceral moment: riffs coiling around themselves, a rhythm section that never lets up and a voice that scratches like sandpaper.
“Simulation” toys with more avant-garde electronics, while “Step On Me” (despite its submissive title) is a frontal assault, with a bass pulsing like an artery and a guitar bleeding distortion. In short, there's something here for everyone.

“BODY TRANSMISSION” is an album that isn't after nuance. It's unapologetically heavy, focused and relentless. MAQUINA. have clearly been listening to Sepultura, Schwefelgelb, Fugitive, Section 25, and have fused them into a single pulsing body. There's evidently no room for subtlety here, and in an age that demands nothing but clear-cut answers, this uncompromising stance makes it necessary, like a well-landed punch. And sometimes, that's exactly what you need.

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16/07/2026