I had not heard of Allied Fracture, but they hail from Bloomington, Illinois and this is their second album. The label describes it thus: “Sounds from 60’s atonal works, 70’s disco, 80’s talk radio, 90’s soundtracks, and 2021 police bodycam audio and local field recordings, syncopated with industrial and hardcore techno rhythms, make Sons of Bureaucracy an intense reflection of the present. It describes how things work great until they stop working at all. The industrial era is collapsing, so you might as well dance - to industrial dance, of course. Get down, find cover, and don’t be afraid.” The J-card describes it as an “atonal industrial breakcore noise odyssey.” That's a whole lot of things thrown together, but it sounds interesting so let's dive In.

We begin with “Collapse,” which sounds almost normal. Not quite industrial, but catchy. Then we kick into hotline which is equally catchy but starts with a kind of Negativland feel with cut up samples. If I had to make a comparison, it would be Pop Will Eat Itself based on their lyrical style, where it is not quite rapping and not quite singing, along with the heavy use of samples. It's clear that they don't take themselves overly seriously, as I found myself laughing through the song “No,” where it talks about “copulating genitals” and “people have the right to listen to what they want to,” followed by the repeated refrain “no!” They have all of the humor and social critique of Negativland, if not necessarily the blatant copyright infringement. Or maybe they do, as everything seems to be grist for the creative mill, from tornado warnings to samples of television shows and what sounds like Lo-Fi analog synth mixed in with loops of almost anything. And like Negativland and PWEI, the cultural critique is present and accounted for. For example in “Protector,” we have loops about the police state and torture and safety. They even mix it up with what I thought was going to be a kind of hillbilly track with a mouth harp before kicking into the familiar driving beat (“Hard Times”).

Overall, I found it to be interesting and a fun listen. If you like cut up with social critique and a beat this will be up your alley. So let's return to the original description. I don't know if I'd quite call it atonal, and after listening to three tapes in a row from Oxidation for review that included two from Knurl, I wouldn't quite call it noise, but we can give them industrial and breakcore. At any rate it was a good time, and that's what matters most, right?