The synthpunk renaissance has reached Norway! Like a nuclear accident, the mutoid garage-rock disaster that’s feverishly gnawing on the fringes of Australia and the U.S has now found its corrosive reach further afield. Akin to Chernobyl’s toxic clouds blowing across Scandanavia with radioactive decay, the city of Bergen has found itself infected with its own variant of the scuzzy sewer swagger spewing songs of crawling eyeballs, Berlin hypnosis, and slavish hematophagy.

A chance encounter with a VOX guitar and drum-machine combo brought two members of The Scumbags away from traditional garage-punk to Flop Machine‘s detuned possibilities of static-ridden electrotrash. Adding a bass and synth player, the Nordic noize quartet has steadily released a string of expert, hooky synthpunk across the last year, now collated in a quasi-compilation Machine Beat Rock And Roll, out on Painters Tapes.

Contentious labels of ‘eggpunk’ needn’t apply, as Flop Machine wield wild, boppy hacks of electro-garage that stir with the radiant pop melodies of Cuir over the rubbery weirdness of Research Reactor Corp. There’s no grit to be heard on the machine-powered euphoria of ‘Berlin’, a glorious surge of hotrod riffs and shining keyboards that belie the sardonic picture of Berlin’s counter-cultural Meccha down to mind control over its music scene. Side B opener ‘URA4’ too showcases Flop Machine’s former Scumbag tilt toward an honest-to-God tune, the bleak dystopic grip of unremitting market forces scored with urgent, R ‘n’ R exhilaration.

By the time that the dizzying stomp of ‘Drink Blood’ cuts the tape to a whiplashed stop, one finds themselves struck with a sudden case of alien hand syndrome, Flop Machine’s invisible strings pulling your arm to play their debut D.I.Y of fresh sleaze again and again. Metal Beat Rock And Roll espouse an important life lesson: when life gives you a guitar, make a guitar with a built-in drum machine!