Members of Fucked Up, Power Trip Launch New Band Masterpiece Machine

Hear "Rotting Fruit" from Riley Gale, Mike Haliechuk and Jonah Falco's new project

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Apr 9, 2020

Fucked Up bandmates Mike Haliechuk and Jonah Falco are already set to release new music as Jade Hairpins next month, and the two have now detailed another new project they've been at work on with Power Trip vocalist Riley Gale.

The three have come together to form Masterpiece Machine and will release a debut EP through Triple B Records/Quality Control HQ on April 15 and 17, respectively. A first song, titled "Rotting Fruit," can be heard below.



As the trio shared with Revolver, Masterpiece Machine was formed after Haliechuk and Falco had finished writing material for Fucked Up's most recent album, 2018's Dose Your Dreams.

"We had these two specific songs that sounded huge and aggressive, so we wanted to carve them off into their own project," Haliechuk recalled. "We sent them to Riley because we felt that his voice would go perfectly over them and he's someone that we've been friends with for years. After we started getting back vocal mixes, it became something that we were all excited enough about to try and turn into a real project, and not just a one-off track."

Gale added that he had become good friends with Haliechuk and Falco after touring with Fucked Up early on in Power Trip's career, and had been asked about potentially guesting on a record from the Canadian punks. 

"When Mike and Jonah came to me with these tracks, Power Trip had just finished like two years of touring nonstop, so I had a lot of downtime on my hands and a friend with a good studio for recording vocals," Gale reflected. "This was way different sounding than anything I expected to do on a Fucked Up record, and I was going to have to step way outside the box on what I do vocally, but I wasn't going to not give it a shot."

One can immediate identify the industrial influence that Masterpiece Machine draw upon, as "Rotting Fruit" suggests listeners "imagine the pounding the drum of Psalm-era Ministry" melded with "flashes of Nine Inch Nails, massive rock riffs, cinematic electronics, and post-hardcore influenced vocals."

"Masterpiece Machine is different but in writing these songs, our first drive was to create something familiar," Falco told Revolver. "Through the process of recording this song, it stepped away from those expectations and developed into this hard-rock, industrial space with unexpectedly cinematic elements: the sweeping, rising, guitar string manipulation on 'letting you in on a secret,' the groove heavy tempo on 'Rotting Fruit' — these are glimpses of things that didn't always fit into the sonic worldview of my projects."

Haliechuk added, "From my perspective in FU, I've always written with a certain pop sensibility, but it's always been couched within a very standoffish end project. With this, I want it to be hard but in a more accessible way, with some groove, and it's stuff I've never really written for before."

Read the band's full conversation with Revolver here.

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