The Punk Site 2023 Top 40: #17 Lucifer Star Machine – Satanic Age

At number 17 in The Punk Site‘s countdown of our contributors favourite releases from 2023 are Hamburg’s Lucifer Star Machine with their fifth full length, Satanic Age, that was released in April via The Sign Records. These 12 nitro-fueled songs aren’t just brutal heavyweight combat: as you’ll soon find yourself singing along to tracks that are as tuneful as The Misfits and Ramones combined. And once their fired-up version of a Kiss song screams out of the speakers, you’ll be already jumping up and down, playing air guitar like your life depends on it. This is Rock ‘n Roll as it oughta be: dirty, reckless and with melodies to die for!

“Lucifer Star Machine are so brilliant that if they didn’t exist, someone would have to make them up. This is the fifth album from the outrageously tuneful German outfit and, without mincing words, it is the most brutally effective melodic rock punk album I have ever experienced. To try to imagine this band, you would have to conjure up the mental experience of Lemmy fronting The Darkness, with all the pomp and bluster that implies. Even if neither of those artistes are to your taste, Lucifer Star Machine will batter you into submission until you kneel before them. Not only are they loud and dangerous, they’re also masters of the fucking obvious – the pretty guitar trickery, the rabble-rousing shouty chorus, the thunder of drums and the growliest bass riffs – and if this sounds like a melange of cliches, you may well be right. But know this: Lucifer Star Machine don’t give one fuck.” (Peter Hough)