MASTER BOOT RECORD – connects Computer Metal to the racing game behind ‘PLUG AND PLAY’

Written by EOS Editorial Team

November 3, 2026

The video accompanying MASTER BOOT RECORD’s recent single “PLUG AND PLAY” also serves as the trailer for No Trace Back, a racing game in development at Theta Division Games. The song appears on Computer Metal, the Italian project’s ten-track, 42-minute full-length, announced for October 30, 2026, through Metal Blade Records.

Vittorio D’Amore, the multi-instrumentalist responsible for MASTER BOOT RECORD, connects the single’s melodic approach to a recurring feature of his albums: “Every MASTER BOOT RECORD album ships with one melodic anthem.” He describes “PLUG AND PLAY” as “the purest build of that code: no drivers, no setup, it just runs and its melodies will stick in your memory.”

The accompanying game brings together D’Amore and Elder0010 at Theta Division Games, the team behind VirtuaVerse. Elder0010 handles programming in Unity, D’Amore writes the music, and the two develop the concept and game design together.

D’Amore describes No Trace Back as a racer rendered in pure vector graphics, drawing on early arcade titles including Star Hawk, Tempest and Cosmic Chasm. Its virtual world has players competing for the prestige of their house. A free demo is available at thetadivision.com; narrative and strategy elements, alongside VR support, are planned for the full version.

“Computer metal has always come with code attached: crypto puzzles, ARGs, a whole server, a video game,” D’Amore says. “This time the code is a racer.”

Computer Metal follows 2024’s Hardwarez. Written via MIDI in Cubase with the computer as its main instrument, the album layers real guitar with synthesizers. Its songs draw on the styles that influenced MASTER BOOT RECORD, including hardcore, progressive metal, thrash, melodic metal, death metal, symphonic classical metal and industrial metal.

“Hardwarez was about the hardware; Computer Metal is more connected to what computers represent in our lives and the memory we have of them,” D’Amore explains. “This album is a sort of codex of the genre, since each song expresses a different style of metal, while still being done with the computer.”

The familiar computer terminology in the track titles is part of that focus on shared experience. “These are terms that entered everyday language, and that is the point: this culture is not a niche, it was a generation’s shared experience,” he says. “Even someone who never opened a computer case knows what it means when a screen asks you to press Ctrl+Alt+Del.”

The announcement describes the music as written note by note using a keyboard and mouse, and the artwork as typed character by character, without generated content. D’Amore receives the personnel credit for everything on the record.

Computer Metal is announced on CD, digitally and as a single LP. US vinyl variants are Onyx and Electric Blue Smoke. European editions comprise 180g Black, Grey/Black A Side B Side limited to 500 copies, and Terminal Green Smoke limited to 300 copies.