2nd Gen: Irony Is (5/5)

Year: 2001
Genre: Progressive Industrial Electro Beat
Label: novamute
TRT: 39:57

I was not looking for this album when I found it. It's almost as if it found me. I'm still not quite sure how I stumbled upon it during a casual browsing of my favorite music-related website (what could that be?).

From the first few seconds of And/Or I was mesmerized. I was bombarded with an onslaught of the cold and mechanical, the grim and calculated. The only artist comparison I can draw is a more beat oriented Azure Skies, though even that is a thin description at best.

It's a shame his follow-up doesn't even come close to matching the ferocity and raw energy found here, but regardless, this is one of my best finds in a long time, and I'm currently obsessed with it.

01 And/Or
02 Slowburn
03 Buried
04 Black Spring
05 Vurt
06 Musicians are Morons
07 Scarred
08 Measurement 9
09 Schism
10 Irony Is

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Snake River Conspiracy: Sonic J!had (4.5/5)

Year: 2000
Genre: Industrial Goth Rock
Label: Morpheus
TRT: 45:55

I went through a huge industrial goth phase in my teenage years, especially when it came to female fronted ones.

This band is/was comprised of two people, Tobey Torres (that's a chick) on vocals, and Jason Slater (former bassist of Third Eye Blind) on everything else. I think they added a guitarist later.

Unlike their musical contemporaries (Collide, Kidneythieves, et cetera), most of thier lyrics are self-satirizing and tongue in cheek. Very entertaining. This, their lone album, also contains two of the best covers I've ever heard, Love Song (The Cure) and How Soon is Now (The Smiths).

I keep hoping that one day a sophmore release will appear out of no where and blow me away, but for now, I'll just have to be content with what is available.

01 Breed
02 Casualty
03 You and Your Friend
04 Lovesong
05 Act Your Age
06 More Than Love
07 Strangled
08 Oh Well
09 Somebody Loves You
10 Vulcan
11 How Soon is Now?

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Faust vs. Dalek: Derbe Respect, Alder

Year: 2004
Label: Staubgold
Genre: Dark Industrial Krautrap
TRT: 52:58

This is an extremely odd release. Two heavyweights of their respective forte join forces to create this mystery dish of an album. One part avant-garde krautrock, one part underground politically explicit rap, it's the sort of thing that makes you sit back and scratch your head. The strangest part about it though, is that it actually works. Not all the time, maybe not always for an entire track, but over-all this record will have you hooked, and you'll want to listen again in case you missed something.

If nothing else, there's little-to-nothing else out there like this, and that's worth at least a few listens.

01 Imagine What We Started
02 Hungry for Now
03 Remnants
04 Dead Lies
05 Erratic Thoughts
06 Bullets Need Violence
07 Collected Twighlight
08 T-electronique
09 Bonus Track

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Azure Skies: Azure Skies (5/5)

Year: 2001
Label: Ant-Zen
Genre: Rhythmic Industrial Noise
TRT: 62:26

Azure Skies is the one-off collaboration of the artists behind Sanctum and Mental Destruction (who consequently also run the Northern Lights record label, home of the legendary Extol and Lengsel). And while you can see influences and styles from both, this transcends either in my mind. I've never heard anything else quite like it. There's something here that just envelopes you and washes you away, whether violently or subtly (sometimes both simultaneously). This is yet another album essential to the formation of my musical and artistic development.

It was released with four different covers, and it's damn near impossible to find a copy of any of them.

01 Crater
02 Deniability
03 Hydrazine
04 Collapse
05 In Eclipse
06 Bring Back Nothing
07 Still
08 Forward Contamination
09 Water, Tree, Stone

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero (5/5)

#4 out of 10
Non-Metal Album of 2007

Year: 2007
Label: Interscope
Genre: Industrial Glitch Pop
TRT: 63:42

If you are not aware of the Alternate Reality Game preceeding this album, immediately go to www.ninwiki.com and read up on it, as it's one of the coolest things I've ever taken part in. The album also makes a lot more since when put in context with ARG. To be honest, I was not a big fan of the album at first. It took me several months of listening for it to really click, but click it did. The album follows people living in a distopian future-world where the government and the church are essentially one entity, where global warming has made most of the world unlivable, and the government is putting sedatives in the water and chips in it's "citizens". Again, to full appreciate and understand the album, you need to follow the ARG from start to finish to put everything in perspective. There are rumors of a Year Zero movie, which would be quite an undertaking (David Lynch, perhaps?), and a follow up album both being in the works, so keep your eyes peeled.

01 Hyperpower!
02 The Beginning of the End
03 Survivalism
04 The Good Soldier
05 Vessel
06 Me, I'm Not
07 Capital G
08 My Violent Heart
09 The Warning
10 God Given
11 Meet Your Master
12 The Greater Good
13 The Great Destroyer
14 Another Version of the Truth
15 In This Twilight
16 Zero-Sum

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