L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation are back with the announcement of Machine Hallucinations, a new album that promises to push the New York synth-punk collective's fusion of hardcore and industrial dance music even further into the red. The record was produced with Uniform's Ben Greenberg, and its lead single "Boots On The Ground" is out now — a bugged-out, seething track that fuses hardcore punk and hardcore dance music into something that feels genuinely unhinged.
The band started as L.O.T.I.O.N. on the New York DIY underground, making apocalyptic synth-punk for basement shows and illegal loft spaces. They expanded the name to L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation as their sound grew more industrial and confrontational, a shift that crystallized on their 2022 album W.A.R. In The Digital Realm — a record that pounded techno rhythms against punk aggression with the subtlety of a crowbar.
Machine Hallucinations continues that trajectory with an expanded lineup that includes veterans of Warthog and Dollhouse alongside frontman and visual artist Alexander Heir, who handled all the artwork for the new record. The guest list is equally stacked: ex-Sepultura drummer Iggor Cavalera appears on the title track, with additional contributions from Los Angeles band La Pregunta? and Fairytale singer Lulu — the same Lulu who appeared on the band's December holiday single "(It's Our) Last Christmas," a characteristically unhinged track billed as a cheery number about the end of the world.
"Boots On The Ground" sounds like what happens when a band stops caring about genre boundaries entirely. The track moves at a pace that's both danceable and violent — the kind of thing that would clear a floor at a techno night and a hardcore show simultaneously, which is probably the point. If you've been following the recent work from Fire-Toolz or the noisier corners of the industrial dance underground, this is the same energy channeled through a punk band that grew up on Black Flag and Front 242 in equal measure.
Machine Hallucinations follows W.A.R. In The Digital Realm and finds L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation continuing to occupy a space that very few bands even attempt — the volatile overlap between punk's aggression and electronic music's hypnotic repetition. The album is due later this spring.