Category: Industrial (Page 2 of 2)

Combichrist: Making Monsters

September 23, 2010 /


RIYH (Recommended If You Hate): Your history teacher, riding the bus to school, cleaning your room

Combichrist are angry! And mean! And scary! And other stuff that will hopefully scare parents and encourage misguided 14-year-olds who want to rebel by going to Hot Topic to buy their records.

The creation of Norwegian musician Andy LaPlegua, Combichrist has been around since 2003. Previous uplifting and inspirational efforts by LaPlegua and crew include The Joy of Gunz, Everybody Hates You and What The Fuck Is Wrong with You People?

Their sound could be be described as “Head Like a Hole” meets “Beautiful People” meets the entire hard house dance movement. Aggressive beats meets aggressive lyrics meets aggressive synths. It’s all just so…aggressive. So much so some call the genre of music aggrotech. But don’t do that – you don’t want to encourage that kind of rampant portmanteauing. If you’re over 20 and take this stuff seriously,then a) you’ll love this record, and b) there’s no helping you. If you find needlessly misanthropic song titles like “Throat Full of Glass” and “Through These Eyes of Pain” hysterical and want to know just how many times LaPlegua can call the object of his affection a slut on “Fuckmachine,” then you might find some humor in Making Monsters, and the music, while a little overbearing at times, is good in a “I need help to stay awake/hate humanity” kind of way.

Just give your mom a hug, or pet some kittens, after listening. (Metropolis Records 2010)

Combichrist MySpace Page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Electronica, Hardcore, Industrial, Metal

Filter: The Trouble with Angels

September 22, 2010 /


RIYL: Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice Cooper’s Brutal Planet and Dragontown

Filter is Richard Patrick. It’s his toy and he is going to steer it, hire the rest of the band and collaborate with who he thinks will make the best record. Mind you, it is going to sound like a Filter record. There will be those trademark Patrick screams contrasted against his solid singing voice; there will be crunchy industrial guitar riffs, chugging bass lines, at least one ballad and Patrick will be wrestling lyrically with subjects like addiction and the ills of organized religion. For The Trouble with Angels, Patrick works with Bob Marlette (Iommi, Alice Cooper, Atreyu among others) to re-sharpen the fangs of Filter. Marlette produces and engineers the record while co-writing nine of the ten songs.

Consistently, this is a heavier effort throughout the 41 minutes then the last several records and is much more akin to the debut Filter release, Short Bus then anything released since. Interestingly enough, Patrick brings back original Filter co-conspirator Brian Liesagang (who left the band in 1997) to add “Sound Design and Programming” to the project. The first three tracks (“The Inevitable Relapse,” “Drug Boy,” and “Absentee Father”) roll over you like a locomotive. Patrick’s intentions are loud and clear. The fourth track, “No Love,” slows the train down but features a thumping chorus and Patrick singing at the edge of his range.

There are two songs where things slow down and the record produces “Take a Picture”-like moments with the ballads “No Re-entry” and the gorgeous album closer “Fades Like a Photograph (Dead Angel).” The latter features some of Patrick’s most poetic and moving lyrics to date. Other than those two songs, Marlette is inspiring Patrick to be heavy. Marlette got great work out of Alice Cooper on Dragontown and Brutal Planet, moving Alice into industrial metal territory for two records. Here he gets a good record out of Patrick’, who has been busy the last couple of years re-energizing the brand name. Filter has released two albums, a greatest hits package and a remix album of 2008’s Anthems for the Damned in the last four years. Sobriety has treated Richard Patrick well and his fans have reaped the rewards of his re-energized work ethic. (Rocket Science Ventures, 2010)

Filter MySpace page

Alternative, CD Reviews, Industrial, Rock

Me, Myself, and iPod 7/28/10: Bayside High stole my record collection

July 28, 2010 /

esd ipod

Have a ton of stuff to do before heading off to Lolla next week, so this will be a short one.

Pete Yorn – Precious Stone
New track from Pete’s upcoming, Frank Black-produced album Self Titled. Sounds like Pete, but rawer, which is just what I was expecting.

Ex Norwegian – Jet Lag
Having reached out to me on MySpace a while back, these guys are quickly becoming a favorite around these parts. At the risk of tagging them as a throwback band – to the ’90s, no less – their sound is definitely not of this time. Big, ringing choruses, slightly dirty bass lines, horn-kissed verses…this would have been a #1 modern rock hit in 1995.

White Car – No Better
Holy Wax Trax, Batman. This Chicago industrial outfit has just made a track that will have fans of “Everyday Is Halloween” running for their Doc Martens.

Team Bayside High – No Sleeves Attached DJ Mix
In truth, this is not the most mind-blowing DJ mix you’ve ever heard. In fact, it’s pretty raw and basic, and when the drums kick in at the end of “Song 2,” I couldn’t help but wince a little. But I like their choice of songs, since they spend most of the time mixing rock songs, and I like the melding of rock and dance. Putting “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in here was a stretch (they had to speed it up to the point where it sounds unnatural), but we’ll still check out their DJ set at Lolla, schedule permitting.

Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Downloads, Electronica, Industrial, Me Myself and iPod, Rock

Rob Zombie: Hellbilly Deluxe 2

February 16, 2010 /


RIYL: Rob Zombie, White Zombie…other zombie related culture

Rob Zombie’s 2006 album Educated Horses was a shocking departure for the shock rocker where he dropped the industrial dance beats and heavy production in lieu of classic rock riffs and heavy metal grooves. It was mature, experimental and a brave move for the man who hadn’t really advanced his musical style since 1992.

Hellbilly Deluxe 2 is not a brave move. Coming 12 years after the original Hellbilly Deluxe, this album finds Rob Zombie forcefully stripping away every development and evolution in his sound to deliver an album that is intentionally uninspired and derivative, but is that a bad thing? Because even though Educated Horses was a bold move for Zombie and it showed he could do more than he did in the past; the brand of rock he first showed us with “Thunder Kiss ’65” is still the what he does best. And while nothing here is original, it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. The industrial beats and distorted guitars that worked in 1998 on tracks like “Dragula” and “Superbeast” still work fine on “Dream Factory” and “Werewolf Women of the SS” (the latter of which named after Zombie’s mock trailer for “Grindhouse”). About the only thing that doesn’t work on this belated sequel is the closing “The Man Who Laughs,” which is a bloated overblown production complete with string arrangements by film composer Tyler Bates and a (very) extended drum solo. Prog rock excess does not belong on a Rob Zombie record.

There are artists who change and evolve their sound over time (REM, U2), and there are artists who discover that they are only really good at one thing early in their career and they stick to it, prevailing cultural winds be damned (Motorhead, AC/DC). It’s becoming apparent that Zombie is more than happy to be in the latter group, and Rob Zombie sounding like Rob Zombie for 20 more years is preferable to someone else trying to instead. (Road Runner 2010)

Rob Zombie MySpace Page

Alternative, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Industrial, Metal, Rock

Nine Inch Nails: Another Version of the Truth

January 14, 2010 /


RIYL: Ministry, Gary Numan, free stuff you can watch on YouTube

If you want some good weed and some killer tie-dye shirts, you talk to Grateful Dead fans, but if you want state of the art A/V work (and maybe some anti-depressants), you go to Nine Inch Nails fans. Last year Trent Reznor let over 400 GB of HD footage from his Lights in the Sky tour “leak” onto torrent sites, apparently after he was unable to release an official DVD with the footage. Over the past year, various NIN fans around the world have been working on the footage, editing, color-correcting and even subtitling it for an “unofficial” release over the internet. That release, dubbed “Another Version of the Truth” finally made its way online, and it was definitely worth the wait.

The Lights in the Sky tour was Nine Inch Nails’ most ambitious yet, a choreographed spectacle that lived up to its name, thanks to multiple LED screens and some of the brightest flood lights you’ll ever be blinded by. Matching the brilliant visuals was the one of Nine Inch Nails most varied set lists to date, incorporating everything from Pretty Hate Machine to The Slip, even including a surprising amount of material from the instrumental Ghosts I-IV. It was a great show – you had to be there. But if you weren’t, this DVD comes damn close to recreating the experience. The footage is edited together great, the cuts are fast when they need to be, but more often than not the edits are lax, letting us take in the performance without added distractions. Which is good, because Trent and company were on fire for this tour. For both the quiet numbers, like the material from Ghosts, or for loud boisterous explosions of noise like “Wish,” the group is tighter than ever, and their performance are made all the more impressive by the revolutionary A/V spectacle that surrounds them (literally, they had a lot of LCD screens out there). Highlights of this include “Closer,” where Trent sings directly into a camera that projects his face across the screen behind them, distorted by the soundwaves of the music, and “The Warning,” where bright displays turn the band into silhouettes.

“Another Version of the Truth” is available online for free here in a multitude of formats, including one that you can burn to a Dual Layer DVD. A Blu-Ray is apparently coming soon. No matter what format you choose however, this is a must-own for NIN fans, and the price sure as hell is right.

Artists, Concert DVDs, Industrial

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