After spending around 10 years trying to find out what kind of music I really like, I realized that industrial related music most often interest me. But still I don't know THAT MANY bands actually involved in this genre. So here's my adventure in industrial world.
Showing posts with label industrial metal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label industrial metal. Show all posts
Even though being one of the early bands (formed already 1989, as a reference NIN and Godflesh are formed 1988) in this industrial metal genre, I've never even heard of Chemlab. Maybe it's due the fact that band split up already 1997 only to made a comeback 2004. That might be the reason they "never made it" really.
Run by two main members, Dylan Thomas More and Jared Louche, and having additional members with backgrounds from many interesting industrial band, Chemlab have toured with bunch of "well-known names" in the industrial metal genre including White Zombie, KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails. But I assume they more or less stayed in US side of the Atlantic.
The old albums sounds really relevant still today (it's not that common with 15 years old industrial albums). There's something catchy in their sound, a bit similar as Pitchshifter in their prime. Here's a sample from their debut album Burn Out at the Hydrogen Bar released 1993.
First time now when I crash into an artist that I've wrote already earlier. Celldweller is electronic rock project created by multi-instrumentalist Klayton (aka Scott Albert) who has been earlier working with for example Argyle Park (or AP2 which I wrote earlier). Celldweller is anyway by far the best known act Klayton has been involved.
Musically I have to say I kinda like this poppier sound of Celldweller. Even though normally I'm not so into this kind of approach, Celldweller must do something right - maybe this reminds about those numetal-era industrial influenced bands (I have to admit that I liked that crap) like Apartment 26 or The Union Underground.
Anyway I give thumbs up for this one, even though it's nothing really special. Here's Switchback from eponymous debut album.
A lets jump back to USA. From there we find a band called Bile. The group is lead by thrash metal band Napalm's former vocalist Krztoff (he's also active member in legendary Pigface). Band was founded 1992 and they've become known for performances including up to eleven people on-stage — including a dominatrix and fire-breather. They've released something like ten albums (some of those must be compilations though). Latest, Hate Radio, coming out last year.
When I start listening first track from Hate Radio album, I keep on wondering who the hell they sound like. Like the Plague sounds so familiar, can someone tell which song that track sounds like? Anyway, their combination of Ministry-like industrial meets even more metallic side of industrial (they have been tagged even with grindcore in Last.fm, which is little bit too much though) sounds really good and songs are catchy. Nightmare Before Krztoff sounds actually really spooky even, which is of course the point also. Overall Bile is really nice surprise.
Here's a track from their Sex Reflex album called In League. Song is featured also in movie Strangeland written by Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister.
When I first heard about this band my expectations went up quite fast. Anyway in this band you have two former Fear Factory men Christian Olde Wolbers and Raymond Herrera who actually founded the band. And i have to admit that I like Fear Factory quite a lot. I had also heard about band called Threat Signal whose vocalist Jon Howard and bassist Pat Kavanagh are the two other guys in this band.
Overall I was anyway little bit dissapointed their overall performance with their debut album Years in the Darkness which was releases in summer 2009. Surely this has the elements of Fear Factory, no surprise since Wolbers and Herrera have admitted that half of the songs are originally intented to be in the Fear Factory album. But I think since the situation has changed quite dramatically in that band lately they just decided to use those songs with their new band.
All the components are here and nicely positioned also, but "THE THING" is missing. Anyway here's their video track Locust from that so far only album.
Already defunct AP2 was formerly known as Argyle Park. Argyle Park was active mid-90s and after reactivation for couple of years in the end of the 90s "they" used that other name. They is in quotation marks in there, since it seems that there seem to be only one guy, Scott Albert, in this band. He's just using different aliases. One alias is not officially identified, but there's some rumors that it could be MTV producer Chris Martello. But anyway this project seem to be more or less the brainchild of Albert, who is lately been more known under moniker Celldweller.
Even though AP2 is categorized as Christian music you really have to know this beforehand. At least I didn't get any Christianity from this. The mix of techno, guitars, samples, distorted vocals and lots of other stuff creates quite interesting sound. Sometimes this reminds me of Prodigy, but this is definately not a Prodigy ripoff. Every listening shows some new side of this group. Interesting group after all.
Here's a nice sample from the Suspension of Disbelief album released 2000.
This is something that I would have listened ten years ago and then I'd have said that sounds quite good. But nowadays...This is just too "mainstream american alternative metal to the masses" to me. Some harsher parts of that sounds still quite nice, but overall I just get bored.
I've actually seen these guys, who actually called it quits just end of last year, once in Finland when they were supporting Slipknot about 8 years ago. Wasn't too impressed then either though, just wondered then why the hell they need to have two keyboard players on stage, when you actually can't hear either of them. All they did there was headbanging with their keyboards.
I was kind of surprised when I now noticed that they actually released that one major label album they made via American Recordings owned by legendary producer Rick Rubin. Seems that even Rick can make bad calls when signing bands.
This is one of the better tracks from that The War of Art album released 2001. No idea what this video is, but seem to feature Christian Bale killing many "troopers".
Industrial black metal from Italy strengthened with some Norwegians. Previously they used drum machine, but nowadays their drummer is Faust who is best known for his work on early Emperor albums. They've had also Attila Chisar (known his work on De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas by Mayhem) on their line-up previously, so Aborym's "black metal credibility" is quite OK.
I've actually always thought that Aborym is just pure black (or death) metal. In practise their sound is really mostly black metal, but they seem to use also lot of industrial sounds. But this is anyway "too black" for me. There's not enough variations in the somgs either for my taste. There's some nice things definately. For example Chernobyl Generation from With No Human Intervention album is really nice little industrial piece.
Here's one sample from their latest album Generator released in 2006.
Their fifth album is also coming this year. Their Myspace pages tells that "they will enter the studio again the 19th of February. This new opus will be a concept consisting of only one track, a harsh monolith of sickness, violence and depravity."
Lets start from the beginning of that list. Order is alphabetical, so we will start with Finnish band called ...and Oceans. This band is somewhat familiar to me already earlier, but since bands the roots are in black metal, which I'm not that keen on, haven't actually checked their stuff earlier. I knew they have some industrial elements in their music in the latter part of their career.
The band was active between 1995-2006 and released five albums during that time. On industrial-wise I'd say they reached their peak on A.M.G.O.D. and Cypher albums. Unfortunately Spotify is not having those albums in their lists (at least at the moment, it seems that Century Media hasn't put their catalogue available in there). But Spotify has their last Season of Mist album The Symmetry of I - The Circle of O , which already shows some real industrial interest on the second part of the album. Dark and depressive sounds are getting closer the ambient genre, but it really is powerful stuff.
But the overall sound of ...and Oceans is not that ambient stuff that can be found on that album. from this video you can more like "the sound of ..and Oceans" in the latter part of their career.You can actually find quite a lot of music from those last two albums from Youtube.
Aphid: Devil Flower: Fruits of Lunacy from their last album Cipher (2002)
...and Oceans later became band called Havoc Unit which wewill check later also. They have actually released a split EP with ...and Oceans, that's strange.
I'm a music enthusiast from Finland. Have been running a music web magazine Noise.fi around ten years. As described in that "header" text also, just trying to find out more what kind of music I really like. I've come to conclusion that industrial-kinda music is my thing, but don't know the genre enough well. So now trying to find more and more bands which I can test. And here's my results, just my opinions (sometimes even really fast verdicts).
I'll try many different styles of industrial related bands. Goth, metal, electro, pop, ebm, ambient, rock and even hip hop (I think hip hop is not that far from this industrial anyway, listen to Dälek if you disagree). So anything will go if it's even remotely attached to industrial.
Please recommend new bands if you don't see your favourite on the list yet.
