New Audio Machine

New Audio Machine is the third album, and Trixter's first of original material in twenty years. The four had broken up in 1995; they regrouped at the end of 2007 and restarted with five shows the following year. A deal with Frontiers followed, and this arrived in April 2012. The line-up — Pete Loran, Steve Brown, P.J. Farley, Mark “Gus” Scott — is the debut line-up with nobody missing. Recording ran at Brown's home studio, while Loran, who lives in Arizona, cut his vocals at his own place and sent the files over. The opener “Drag Me Down” lets the band avalanche in out of an acoustic intro, and carries a co-write from Glen Burtnik of Styx. The lead single “Tattoos & Misery” runs a 1990s alternative-flavoured verse into a chorus that is pure 1980s. Past the hardness of “Machine” and “Save Your Soul” and the calm of “Live for the Day,” it ends on “Walk With a Stranger” — a revival of a demo Dave Sabo and Rachel Bolan of Skid Row wrote back in 1988 and never released. A comeback that chases no trend and simply sounds like itself.