Misc. Day – CPU Assassins

“Is your CPU trying to kill you?” describes the cover of L.O.T.I.O.N.’s 2019 release World Wide W.E.B. Coming directly from the bowels of New York City as the masterminds of design to brutality behind sound, the punk roots mix with industrial assault to form an assassination guild of surprise.

Alexander Heir is a fantastic artist that comes through the spotlight for orchestrating an array of deeply detailed but truly sinister artwork that both entices and disgusts onlookers. His style is a precursor to the love of punk rock and the shock value that art can hold, which transfers incredibly well into the overall quality of L.O.T.I.O.N. The band is essentially a lovechild of 80’s B-movie gleam with all the technology of the 21^st century. As L.O.T.I.O.N. takes this center stage with World Wide W.E.B., the performances are as stricken with might as they are obtuse imagery.

The opening bombs come from the first track “Hardware” where a dystopian future may not be so far ahead of the band. Hearing a mechanical voice over the push of authentic percussion is almost jarring as lyrics describe, “Bad news from the robotics labs of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this is the next generation primed and ready for brutalization.” Somehow behind the claustrophobic curtain that is draped over the listener, L.O.T.I.O.N. is a sporadic wet-dream of camouflaged experimentalism.

Everything to create a substantial punk record is present here on World Wide W.E.B., from the rapid-fire percussion and strings that are personified to clash through-hardened steel swords. There is a hopelessness to the lyrics that dawn a nuclear winter, and finally a push to kill more than to create. With one of the midpoint tracks, “Killing A Dove” is a synth-wave build into a grainy and almost continuously burning nightmare. “As simple as it could be, there’s no chance for survival,” hits on this doomed glimpse into a pulverized and frankly mesmerizing fate covered by lyrics that almost always refrain to misery.

Released on Toxic State Records, the name fits nestled perfectly into one of the strongest releases from the New York underground. Where desolation and death roams free, L.O.T.I.O.N. is an upstanding model to experimentation with old loves.

Listen To World Wide W.E.B. Here!!! – BandCamp/Spotify/Amazon/iTunes