Music by Machines - Industrial Thread

My avatar will let you know how I feel about VNV Nation, but I don't really treat it as an industrial band.

Conjure One is more of the same. Good music to read to.

The new Delerium is better than the last few ones (I didn't really like anything after Karma). Kristy Thirsk return to collaborate.

KMFDM and VNV Nation are two of my favorites. My absolute favorite is Celldweller, but I'm not sure one could classify Celldweller as strictly industrial as much as a collection of genres blended with strong leanings towards industrial/electronica. Worth a listen.

I think The Process is never given enough credit, and I think the song Amnesia is an unsung, forgotten classic - nearly as good as Worlock, Addiction, or any of the other brilliant well-known SP songs.


It's still a much better album than Mythmaker (which I agree IS a GREAT return to form album).

Funker vogt new one "Aviator" is as good as all the previous ones, but then again ten years of making albums about the cruelty of war can get redundant.

take a gander

Celldweller is actually pretty great. I tend to approach industrial with a rock/metal sensibility, so Jerk, Static-X (industrial?), MDFMK, Rammstein are good listens. Anyone like the new NIN record? I actually became aggravated listening to it. Fuck that album.

Then you should try Combichrist latest title: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

Have any of you heard clips from kmfdm latest Tohuvabohu?

comments

I have that single, very nice stuff. Combichrist has good stuff but it's major singles would get WAY overplayed at the industrial clubs.

Ah Industrial, my many Friday nights spent going to Das Bunker. Haven't been there in quite a while. In some point in time I'll come back for the music.

Now I know it's not Industrial but I'm highly looking forward to listening to "Red Stars" by Birthday Massacre. I'm a sucker for such melodic stuff.

i so agree.

fla have a couple of releases since then.I haven't heard vanished but bought artificial soldier, and found it very disappointing. I also heard that their releasing a remix album this year.

Combichrist is pretty damn good. Wumpscut is hit-or-miss, but when they're great they're, well, great. VNV has some music I really dig, but I honestly don't like the vocals.
In fact, the vocals sink a lot of "modern" industrial for me, there are far too many bands out there with singers who are doing their best Cure impressions or are trying to go super "evil" and failing).

I'm also a big fan of the more mainstream stuff with strong industrial influences(and heavy guitars), like NIN, later White Zombie, Celldweller, KMFDM, Ministry, and yes, Static-X(a total guilty pleasure of mine, I fucking love 'em).
Good to hear about the new Ministry, Chavez mentioned it was good in another thread, I'm going to have to check it out. Dark Side of the Spoon was so fucking awful, I almost gave up on them myself at that point.

I used to listen to a lot of older stuff like Front 242 and Skinny Puppy. I couldn't believe how different Skinny Puppy is now, but I suppose that's to be expected, considering the most recent disc of theirs I own is Too Dark Park.

A rambling post, but yeah, I dig this stuff.

IIRC, Combichrist is doing a show this Saturday at the Avalon. I saw a small portion of their show couple years back during the "LA Industrial Festival" but I was so freakin exhausted I just left before the show completed.

I will say also the frontman's other band Icon of Coil has a few good songs.

I agree in regards to Wumpscut being hit or miss but damn how can you not love songs like "Wreath of Barbs", "Christfuck" (I know, what a title, eh?), "Golgotha" and "Jesus Antichristus".

Speaking of Skinny Puppy, I saw them in '05 and I'm still unsure to this day what I exactly saw.

Yeah, Combichrist is a side project started by Andy LaPlegua of Icon of Coil. Actually I think I saw him once at this one Goth/Industrial club in Koreatown. Tall guy.

Too Dark Park is a great record, but you've got to check out Last Rights, which was their follow up to Too Dark Park. It's more noise/sound based than any of their other stuff and it may take repeated listening to warm up to , but I honestly think it is one of the most amazing things I've ever heard.

And yeah, their new stuff, which I do enjoy, isn't so much a return to the old Puppy as it is a fusion of their respective solo projects. But Dwayne Goettel is dead and they could never really be the band they used to be without him.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

I was working on a horror screenplay for a while and all I listened to was Too Dark Park and Fantômas' Delìrium Còrdia. It worked great for what I was doing.

I recently discovered Godflesh, they are incredible. From what I've heard so far, Streetcleaner and Songs Of Love And Hate are the best.

Just having a drum machine is not enough; Godflesh is not industrial. If they were, then Big Black would be, too, and they're not.

Songs of Love and Hate actually sorta blows, in the grand scheme of Godflesh. Pure and Slavestate are better, though Slavestate even has only a few good tracks. Jesu is also fantastic, though they've leaned towards a sound more like My Bloody Valentine.

Funny this thread showed up, though. Yesterday I downloaded all the Jewels tracks so far available from Einsturzende Neubauten, and it's a great record. One more track to be released, I think, this coming week. I'm really enjoying the 14 tracks I have so far, though. It's probably not worth the money to become a surrorter if you have only passing interest, though.

I know it's not new stuff, but I'm constantly amazed at how little love Throbbing Gristle seem to get, but that could just be my country sucking a bit in that department. Speaking of my country, Skinjuku Thief are an Australian Industrial local act that most certainly do not fucking suck. Fantastic music almost ambient at times. If you can get your hands on some of this you will be in flavour country.

I was really into Skinny Puppy for a long time. Too Dark Park was one of my favorites, but after Last Rights I left them. Years ago I bought some Too Dark Park off of iTunes, and man alive, it seemed really grating on my ears. Last Rights (with the exception of Mirror Saw) was pretty bad too -- Ogre's delivery just didn't do it for me on that album. It was too much barking and monontone, particularly on The Killing Game track. Oddly enough, I always dug his stuff with Pigface (a great live band, btw -- if you get a chance, go see them).

Rabies, in my opinion, was their best album. I know that puts me squarely at odds with most of their fan base, but it's the one that spoke to me the most. It's been dismissed mainly as Al Jorgensen's interpretation of a Skinny Puppy record, which is probably true, but it's a good interpretation.

I like Rabies (like Pailhead's Trait, it's a fun pseudo-Ministry record) but Too Dark Park is my ideal SP record. It's grating on purpose, but it's also forward-thinking in the way Key and Goettel used samples, rhythms and a broad sonic palette. There's not another record that merges beats both pounding and dancable with the sort of grim improvised lyricism Ogre was briefly so good at. Last Rites has several good moments, but also folds into itself one too many times to be broadly listenable.

Everything post-Last Rights is utter shit. The reconstituted The Process, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker range from pathetic to outright miserable.

I can dig that -- it's why Too Dark Park was my number 2. The first track was especially nice. I guess my tastes changed over the years. I'll give it another listen.

Any fans of The Machines of Loving Grace around these parts?
They took industrial elements and made them poppy in the same way as NIN, and such NIN ripoffs as Gravity Kills, but they're way better than GK.

Concentration is still one of my favorite albums.

Their first disc(self titled) has it's moments(Trent remixed their single as well), Concentration is aces, and Gist is a mess because they decided to sound like a straight-up band(or they embraced their live sound, I never saw them live). It has it's moments though.
Most people only know them because they were on the Crow soundtrack, but Concentration is certainly worth a listen.

I'll second this, and also add Shihad who are in a similar vein.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn-5IU4eQdA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4HYzrKYVtI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6CtBAdcR4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6CtBAdcR4

Looking at this thread, I've got to wonder what defines Industrial Music for most people.

As with some other things, I'm a hard case when it comes to applying the tag -- Throbbing Gristle, Neubauten, several bands from the Indstrial Records roster. These bands had an anti-musical aesthetic which defined 'industrial'. They weren't just making abrasive music, they were turning specifically anti-musical sounds into music, or utilizing musique concrete techniques and found objects to define a new worldview that was necessarily dependent upon industry.

A lot of the bands listed here, to me, are just dance music. FLA, Skinny Puppy, NIN, etc. Ironically I think a lot of these bands are much closer to tribal music, which is necessarily the antithesis of industrial. Even bands like Coil and Psychic TV, which are labeled industrial because they shot off from Throbbing Gristle, are often more dance than anything else.

Hell, a lot of the bands listed here sound more like The Cure than Throbbing Gristle.

It seems like industrial got co-opted and equated with 'goth' at a certain point, mostly because it sounds a lot tougher. I've got nothing against goth, but being sad and angry and wearing black isn't industrial.

Rotosand? Do you mean Rotersand or is that something else?

Frankly, I really haven't come across anything and maybe that's due to the fact I don't hang around at Industrial clubs anymore but there doesn't appear to be anything on Metropolis Records.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for synth and melody. Depeche Mode whore I am.

Onew of my big regrets is that I never got to see Ministry live during their 1990's heyday. "In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up (live)" makes the case for it being an amazing experience.

I did get to see Front 242 at a Lollapalooza. Got old really fast.

I never really branched out from Ministry/NIN before I got bored with industrial.

In my experience, industrial music works only in small venues. Anything big gets lost fast. From Ministry to Coil to KMFDM, I never saw them outside a 2000 people or less venue. And all we're awesome.

I'll check out the new OhGr!