Metal Machine Music

Metal Machine Music has no songs. Each of its four tracks fills one side of the double LP, built from layers of feedback and distortion. Mark Richardson of Pitchfork wrote that Reed made it alone at his Manhattan loft, mixing the results into four pieces of about sixteen minutes each. He added that the equipment list on the back cover was a prank. Reed said he took inspiration from the drone music of La Monte Young, and that he tuned all the guitar strings to the same note. In a 2007 interview with Pitchfork he said the myth about the record was better than the truth.

RCA took it off the market three weeks after it appeared in July 1975. It is reported to have sold 100,000 copies, according to the liner notes of the 2000 CD reissue, and it became the most returned album in RCA's history. In Rolling Stone, James Wolcott likened it to the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator, while Lester Bangs wrote that as a statement it was great. The Wire put it on its 1998 list of 100 records that set the world on fire while no one was listening. Pitchfork gave it 8.7 in 2017. Reed first performed it live in March 2002 with the ensemble Zeitkratzer, and in 2008 formed the Metal Machine Trio with Ulrich Krieger and Sarth Calhoun.