The Star Trek Alien Language Inspired By One Of The Worst Albums Of All Time

Before we can get into how Star Trek’s Breen had their language inspired by Lou Reed, we need to bring you up to warp speed on these exotic aliens. The Breen were once something of a boogie man in the franchise until they popped up on Deep Space Nine, eventually joining the Dominion and becoming major players in their own right thanks to their exotic technology. Nobody ever expected these aliens to return to the franchise, but decades later, they popped up again as the Big Bads of Discovery’s final season.

What made their appearance in Star Trek: Discovery so noteworthy is that we finally got to see a Breen with his helmet off and speaking an understandable language. In Deep Space Nine, it was a running bit that nobody knew what these aliens looked like underneath their uniforms. And when they spoke on that classic spinoff, their voices were a weird, electronic crackle seemingly only understood by Weyoun and the lead Founder.

Now that the Star Trek history lesson is over, let’s get to the good stuff: what does the Breen language have to do with an old Lou Reed album? In short, the Deep Space Nine post-production crew was charged with figuring out what these weird aliens were supposed to sound like whenever they spoke onscreen. That crew was instructed to listen to Reed’s Metal Machine Music for inspiration, and sure enough, every weird Breen crackle does sound like something right out of this album.

If you know more about Star Trek than Lou Reed (or maybe you don’t know much about either), you might think the Breen language being inspired by this album would be a real honor for the musician. However, Metal Machine Music isn’t just considered Reed’s worst album…many music critics think it might be one of the worst albums ever made. The album was released in 1975 and initially yanked from store shelves for the simple reason that it had no songs, rhythms, or melodies, just weird feedback, and guitar noise effects.

The album has picked up some fans over the decades, with some music nerds hailing it as an early forebearer of the noise genre. Modern critics have even re-evaluated it, finding meaning in its various electronic fuzz. For the most part, though, the critical consensus is that Reed might or might not have been attempting to make a statement but that such efforts are wasted when nobody knows what the heck you’re saying. 

When Metal Machine Music first came out, Rolling Stone memorably declared that it sounded like “the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator.” It’s entirely possible that this review influenced the Star Trek producers when it came to creating the Breen language. These aliens were experts at creating cold storage units, and in the words of Captain Sisko, “If anyone knows how to keep things cold, it’s the Breen.”

They should know, Ben. After all, they speak the same language as your space fridge.