Deadglow Album Review- MACHINE SKIN
Album Review Done By: Duzzy Clayton
Photography By Sami Perttunen
Album Cover Art By Petri Lampela
I first came across Jukka Ruottinen, lead singer of the band Deadglow, a few years ago when I still hosted The Lunch Show on SME Fusion Radio and I instantly became a fan of his, and of any band or music he was involved with. I was driven to play him on my show and show that, as well as Deadglow, Jukka is involved with quite a few bands/projects, which I will get into later, but at the moment I want to talk about the latest album from Deadglow.
Deadglow is a Progressive Rock / Alternative Metal trio from Oulu in Finland consisting of Jukka Ruottinen (Vocals), Simo Lukkari (Guitar & Bass) and Juho Mikkonen (Drums).
The Deadglow sound is progressive and melodic, yet straight forward. You can hear echoes of Death, Judas Priest, Alice In Chains and Pink Floyd, whilst appealing to fans of TesseracT, Karnivool, Dead Letter Circus and Amorphis. The talented trio is inspired by 80s music, sounds, echoes, synths as well as Sci-fi and Horror movies and art.
Deadglow has been hard at work recording their debut album MACHINE SKIN and that is what I am here to talk about in this review.
Photography by: Sami Perttunen
Machine Skin is the debut album from Deadglow that features 10 in-your-face mind-blowing tracks.
Everything about this album is great: the vocals, guitars, bass and drums. What stands out for me, being a huge grunge fan, is the very obvious grunge sound; but the cool thing about this band and their sound is that other genres and sounds can also be heard on each song, and as mentioned earlier there are echos of influences of Pink Floyd, Judas Priest etc. This makes it hard to pigeon-hole them in a specific genre. Why should you, when this band is breaking boundaries and doing it in an awesome way that shows there will definitely be something for everyone on the album.
Some of my favourite songs that stand out off the album (even though the whole album is great) are: Coming Down, Machine Skin (Album title), Nothing to fear, Escape, and a very cool Iron Maiden cover of Remember Tomorrow.
I do remember back in my radio show days, two songs that had been sent to me for airplay back then were: Nothing to fear and Escape; and I am glad to see that they have made the debut album because they are awesome songs. Look out for the ending bit of Escape, because just when you think the song is done a short jam session comes into play which is fun to listen to.
Photography by Sami Perttunen
Lead Singer Jukka Ruottinen had this to say about the new album: “We are very happy and proud of our debut album, I think there is something there for every rock fan, hope you check it out and enjoy”, while RSA Rock N Metal fans Founder Gilby Fiuza said the following about Deadglow- Machin Skin: “Deadglow “Machine Skin” is a great ambient and in-your-face rocking album filled with various rock genre elements including soft rock, grunge, progressive & hard rock/metal. Also includes a lovely grunge/rock cover of the classic Iron Maiden tune “Remember Tomorrow”. Happy to have this album in my collection of rock!”. A few years back Lead Singer Jukka once covered a band called Scanner’s track namely It’s A War and Joe Brady, Lead Vocals and Bassist for Scanner had this to say about Machine Skin: “Darkness, metal, goth, killer musicianship and vocals. I can’t recommend Deadglow’s new album ‘Machine Skin’ highly enough. Every song is a rocking gem!” Dianne Moore from US band The Cranberry Merchants and also Co Host of radio show The Beat on Cowboy Joe Radio had this to say about the new album: “Machine Skin” by Deadglow is a rich aural experience that completely envelopes the listener. It’s one of the purest forms of progressive rock out right now and the production quality is pristine.”
My advice to anyone listening to the album: play it from start to finish, don’t skip any tracks, just sit back or rock out and listen to the awesomeness of Deadglow; proving that Finland has got some great bands and Deadglow is just one band that is waving the Finland flag high and is about to take the world by storm.
When I started this review I mentioned that lead singer Jukka is involved with other bands and projects, and although this review is all about Deadglow, other bands worth checking out are The Psycho Season (Simo Lukkari is also involved in this project), Bom Lulu and also some of Jukka’s solo work which is awesome. Deadglow’s drummer Juho Mikkonen is also involved with a band called The Groupie High School, which is also worth checking out. Please see below for links for all these projects
Photography by Sami Perttunen
Social media links
Stream/Download Album link
Deadglow- The Last Ones (Official Music Video)
Deadglow- Coming Down Lyric Video
Deadglow- Machine Skin Official Lyric Video (Album Title Track)
Deadglow-Your Blood (Parts 1-3) Official Lyric Video
Hi guys! Very nice review, thank you!
I played drums on “Escape” and I’m happy to enlighten you about that jamming in the end of the song. It was something we didn’t talk about in advance, there was just a recording engineer and me in the studio that night. So I was surprised when I heard it (jamming) there for the first time when it was mixed and done and had it in my email, actually, in that recording session I also thought the song ended, for some reason I kept playing random jam like shit because I felt to it, haha.
Luckily the rec was on.
-Matti Torro