Leather Laces is an anonymous electronic and industrial metal group from Italy that has created a very powerful, dangerous and exciting type of music. This group’s members never show their faces, always preferring heavy tactical police clothing and gas masks, leaving listeners entirely focused on their gloomy story and their futuristic art. They work very closely with a visual artist called “SHOE” to make sure that their look and their music tell the same passionate story of a planet taken over by machines. Their music is distinctive and is a strong blend of crushing metal guitars, incredibly clean and accurate computer synths, deep bass lines and furious drum machines. They employ these musical weapons, like sonic machines, to create a gloomy universe that addresses our darkest anxieties about computers, online tracking and modern technology taking over our everyday lives.
The band locked themselves away for eighteen months in a secret recording studio dubbed Devisal Studios to compose their new album, “Intercontinental Ballistic Music.” The album is designed to function exactly as its name implies: a volley of hefty missiles launched from afar and intended to detonate right in the listener’s head. The heart of the project is the great fight between cold, perfect computer technology and the wild, unrestrained, emotional soul of real human beings. Having spent a year and a half hiding away from the public, the band has created a full and harrowing journey, making the listener feel the stress of living in a world where machines are progressively taking over. They haven’t just made a standard collection of songs, they have created an entire musical world that makes us think about how we live today.
The album begins with “Extruder/Destroyer”, an extremely heavy and brutal intro to this dark, machine-run planet. The core theme of this song is physical change, showing how a powerful system tries to break human bodies and make them into mindless tools. The music is in the loudest and strongest metal styles, sounding like a massive machine press crushing everything in its path, melting human individuality like raw iron in a factory to manufacture pieces for a larger machine. This song is a very obvious warning that the systems that run our society do not want free citizens who can think for themselves. They want obedient pieces that will assist the machine run. By opening the album with such a strong sound, the band makes sure the listener feels the burden of having to survive in a world that wants to erase who you are right away.
The second song off the album, “Mind Control Techniques,” takes the conflict from the physical body to the human mind. This track cautions us about how we are shaped every day by digital devices, online tracking, computer algorithms and the internet, about what we desire, what we buy and what we think. The music here is really clear, neat and ordered, rather than loud and chaotic sound, and perfectly shows how quiet and inconspicuous contemporary tracking systems are. The band suggests that we often sacrifice our independence, our ability to think for ourselves, simply because we desire comfort, ease and easy technology. It is a disturbing reminder that the forces that govern us don’t need to employ physical violence when they can easily program our thoughts to agree with them.
It is a complete contrast to the quiet control of the previous track, “Rocket Launcher” is a sudden and exciting explosion of physical fighting back. And this song is about the precise moment that somebody decides to stop hiding, to break away from internet surveillance technologies, and to unleash a tremendous fight against the machine. The song is super-fast and combines classic, high intensity metal stylings to let you experience the powerful rush of freedom, adrenaline and aggressive revolt. It is a stark reminder that when a system has full control, the only way for human beings to take their lives back is via physical opposition. The sound is so rapid and furious that the song makes the listener feel like they are clutching a weapon and battling for their own lives.
The 4th song, “Deployed to Hell,” is a slow, heavy and very melancholy ballad looking at the mental damage produced by current virtual battles. It portrays the story of troops sent to fight in digital battlefields and how technology may blind us to real human anguish. The music is quite slow and tiresome, keeping the listener in a dense impression of being lost in a digital wasteland with no way out. The song is a poignant warning about how technology might transform actual human death, pain and injury into mere statistics and pixels on a screen. It shows how quickly people lose their inherent capacity for sadness and pity for others when violence is transformed into a game.
The fifth track, “Marching In The Fog,” is dead in the midst of the album and talks about how difficult it is to uncover the truth today. In a world of fake news, lies, deepfakes and much too much information online, it is very simple to get totally lost and lose your direction. The song combines fuzzy and gloomy electronic noises to make the listener feel bewildered, as if a bunch of soldiers are marching through thick, heavy fog, not knowing where they are going or who is guiding them. The song is telling us that a society that is overwhelmed with too much data may be easily led, manipulated and driven over a precipice by the powerful. It is a message of caution about what we believe in a world where truth is always being hidden.
The sixth track, “Heavy Machine Gun,” is a powerful anthem about maintaining a lengthy, continuous fight against the system. The point is that it takes a constant drive, discipline and energy to survive the frigid control of modern institutions. The soundtrack is in steady, military-style beats that make you feel like you are marching in a long, hard conflict that never ends. Human willpower is turned into a continual stream of bullets to wear down the power of enormous institutions. It tells us that disobedience cannot be a one-time explosion of wrath but must be a lifelong struggle. The song shows that the only way to overcome an all-consuming machine is with an even greater, indomitable human spirit that refuses to give up.
The seventh track, “Massive Dark Raid,” takes us into the fascinating universe of cyber spies and stealthy digital break-ins. This song is about a planned secret mission to steal information from a highly protected computer system of a corporation. The music is a quiet spooky blend of dark sounds and heavy metal, setting you in the mood of tension as you sneak through prohibited digital places and dodge firewalls. It says that in the modern world information is the most potent weapon of all, and disclosing the secrets of the strong is the most perilous act of revolt. It is a terrible and exciting reality of modern technological warfare that the most vital battles are fought in the dark and in silence.
The eighth track, “Midnight Extraction Point,” is a profoundly lonely song about a person seeking to escape the digital world.The only song on the album not assisted by anybody outside, it is devoted totally to the lonely voyage of fleeing away from the system in the middle of the night. The loneliness and fragility of a person trying to break free from a massive tracking system is expressed through icy, quiet synth sounds. It’s a darkly meditative observation about how hard it is to defend your own life, how when the biggest fight is ended, defending yourself is a path you need to walk alone.” It puts us in perspective as to the smallness of a single human being compared to the enormous cold machines of modern society.
The album ends with the last song, “Unit Goes Home,” and ends it on a sad and fatigued note. This song isn’t about a happy win, it’s about the heavy tiredness that comes after a long, agonizing fight. The music slows, slowly dying away like a machine losing energy, shutting off for the last time. It leaves the listener thinking quietly to himself, suggesting that even if we survive the fight against technology, we are eternally transformed by the conflict, taking the heavy wounds of the fight back into our usual, tranquil existence. It’s a beautiful, calm finish that exposes the terrible cost of war and leaves the listener in utter silence as the final notes fade away.
Ultimately, Intercontinental Ballistic Music is much more than just a set of loud tunes; it is a well constructed musical world. Leather Laces has produced a sound that successfully embodies our innermost anxieties of being controlled, tracked and erased by technology. They cover their faces and remain anonymous and make us concentrate on their message only, not on who they are. As the final song fades out into quiet, the album issues a powerful warning that we need to wake up, we need to feel the impact of the digital world and we need to fight ferociously to safeguard our human hearts.
For more, follow Leather Laces on Spotify, devisal.it
