Unlike Bowie's previous backing bands, Tin Machine acted as a democratic unit, which was reflected in promotional interviews.

[6] Towards the end of 1987, Bowie conducted some sessions in Los Angeles, California with members of Bryan Adams' backing band and producer Bruce Fairbairn.

[11][8] The demos showcased Gabrels' unique guitar sound, described by biographer Marc Spitz as "improvisational and multi-note but simultaneously hard and bluesy".

[15] From there, Bowie and Gabrels composed demos for a new project, which included "Bus Stop", "Baby Universal", "Pretty Pink Rose" and an early version of "Under the God".

[8] During a launch party for a Glass Spider Tour video in Los Angeles, Bowie ran into bassist Tony Fox Sales,[15] whom he hadn't worked with since the recording of Iggy Pop's Lust for Life in 1977.

[8] According to Gabrels, the Sales brothers were chosen as the rhythm section so they didn't have "checkbook musicians", specifically wanting former members of a band.

[17] Meanwhile, the positive reaction of the "Look Back in Anger" remix led Bowie to hire producer Tim Palmer—at the recommendation of the Cult's Billy Duffy—for his next project.

[14] Spitz similarly states that Gabrels and the Sales brothers assumed they would be assisting Bowie in creating a follow-up for Never Let Me Down rather than forming a band.

[16] Bowie and Gabrels spent a week there, writing songs such as "Baby Can Dance", "Pretty Thing" and "Shopping for Girls", before the Sales brothers arrived.

[8] Gabrels recalled that the first week of their arrival was the equivalent of "freshman hazing": "all they wanted to do was push me because David was placing a certain amount of trust in me, and I had never done a record that had been released internationally.

[16] In the studio, Hunt Sales arranged his drum set on a riser, which overpowered the room, leaving the guitarists unable to hear themselves play.

[4][20] The other Tin Machine members urged Bowie to avoid re-writing his lyrics: "They were there all the time saying, 'Don't wimp out,' sing like you wrote it ...

"[17] After a break in recording, the sessions moved in the spring of 1989 to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas,[8][16][24] which Palmer recalled as being a completely different environment than Switzerland.

John Lennon's son Sean visited the band during this time; this encounter inspired them to cover his father's 1970 song "Working Class Hero".

Bowie recollected a feeling of indifference: "We really weren't interested in what kind of band name we had, so it was almost arbitrary – ah, let's just pick a song title."

"[21] AllMusic's Mark Allender described the music as "hard-edged guitar rock" that contains "intelligence" which other albums in the genre lacked at the time.

[28]Jon Pareles of The New York Times stated that lyrically, Tin Machine "juxtaposes love songs with rants about current crises".

[37] Furthermore, Perone states that the "apocalyptic imagery" of the title track sets up the overarching theme of "the end of the world" that "pervades" the album.

[39] The cover artwork for Tin Machine depicts the four band members in dark suits, which Spitz describes as giving them a look of "a gang of clean-cut bankers".

[8][44] Nevertheless, EMI America released Tin Machine on 22 May 1989,[8][36] issuing different LP and CD formats, with the catalogue numbers MTLS 1044 and CDP 7919902, respectively.

The third and final single, an edit of "Prisoner of Love" backed by a live version of "Baby Can Dance", was released the following month and failed to chart.

[51] Tin Machine accompanied the album's release with a 13-minute long music video comprising performance-style clips of songs, with each one segueing into the next, starting with "Pretty Thing" and ending with "Under the God".

[55] The shows were received with mixed reviews;[55] critic Alastair McKay wrote in the Herald Scotland: "For all their experience, the band are poor timekeepers, and Bowie's voice is at sea with the very notion of high-volume aggression.

[24] Some noted it as Bowie's most aggressive work since 1980's Scary Monsters,[4][41] with a reviewer for Q magazine calling it "the loudest, hardest, heaviest effort of his entire career" and "an experience that's not unlike allowing your head to be used as a punchbag".

[4] Don Waller of the Los Angeles Times gave the album a positive review, calling all 12 tracks on the LP edition "solid" and welcoming "a couple" as "classic additions" to Bowie's catalogue.

Aggressive, direct, brutal and stylishly plain, it combines the energy of the rock avant-garde with traditional R&B rhythmic punch",[28] summarising the album by calling it "incendiary fun" and noting that "the buoyant Sales brothers and Gabrels certainly equal and frequently surpass Bowie".

[40] In Record Mirror, Steve Masters said the music "trudges along mechanically in a kind of soft metal mould" and the album itself ends up "a dusty trip down self-indulgence street".

[41] Meanwhile, in a 1998 poll conducted by Melody Maker compiling the 20 worst albums of all time, as chosen by numerous DJs and journalists, Tin Machine was voted number 17.

[34] Some reviewers noted that the band explored elements of grunge and alternative rock before those styles became popular;[10][35][38] Palmer and Asregadoo considered the record's sound "proto-grunge".

[24] Buckley primarily criticises the lack of melodies or catchy choruses, a sentiment echoed by Bowie's previous collaborator Adrian Belew.