Album Review: Hot Boxin’

Kicking off with the mesmeric HOT!, a track that has hints of Bowie with a bit of Lou Reed, an expressive ditty that is decorated with great vocal harmonies and a very catchy melody. It’s a great song that introduces you to a very interesting album, each track from there is subtly different, but all are full of dirty guitar grinds driven with a heavy hypnotic beat and layered with surprising backing vocal arrangements and retro keyboard highlights.

The songs on Hot Boxin’ all have a similar metronomic rhythm too, but each track has its own unique mix of sounds and melody that keep you interested, like Bad By Design which starts with surprising fax machine sounds and other synthetic delights before kicking into the stomping industrial grinds that the album is abundant with. The vocal work from Steffan while not wide in range is robust and expressively dramatic, and it fits the rugged sound of the album perfectly.

The Steffan van Soest Smoke Machine have once again delivered an eclectic and unorthodox sound that they are infamous for, full of lyrical complexity and melodic delights that are well worth a listen.

_{Review written by Andrew Smit}