I am much more familiar with KMFDM’s later work, in the ’90s, as they got dancier and dancier and lapsed into self-parody. My experience of all that was further impacted by having a friend in high school who wore KMFDM t-shirts, which made them look so hardcore and threatening. And then I listen to them …
Tag: Industrial Rock
Nihil (1995) by KMFDM
So I don’t like KMFDM. And I’m starting to think I know why. But my general dislike of a band always makes it kind of hard to fairly review them. This record seems to be the consensus best or second best of their career. But I do not like what they do here. I gave …
The Great Annihilator (1995) by Swans
I am still far from a Swans expert – though I have seen them in concert! – but I feel compelled to echo the comments of others about how this record feels either like “more accessible Swans” or some kind of hybrid of their ’80s sound with a more traditional approach to songwriting (at least …
The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989) by Ministry
“Thieves” gets things off to a pretty incredible start. Though this obviously isn’t the first industrial metal album, of even the first Ministry album to contain industrial metal, it still feels like this is pretty much as good as industrial metal got in the ’80s, with pummeling but mechanical-sounding guitars and all sorts of things …
This Is the Day…This Is the Hour…This Is This! (1989) by Pop Will Eat Itself
One of the weirdest things to happen during the alternative era is that period of time when British rock bands started incorporating sampling into their music (and occasionally rap). The more of this music I stumble upon, the more I want to read a book about the whole scene because it’s kind of weird, right? …
Angst (1993) by KMFDM
Note: I spend this entire review comparing this record to a Ministry record which came out in 1998, but which I wrongly thought came out two days earlier. So this review can be ignored. I had an acquaintance in high school – a friend of a friend more than a friend – who used to …
The Land of Rape and Honey (1988) by Ministry
This is my second Ministry album but it’s an earlier one. As with so many other bands that I’ve approached backwards, this one doesn’t quite do it for me in the way that the later one did, but…
Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993) by Depeche Mode
At this point I have heard enough synthpop (and enough Depeche Mode) to understand how this record breaks from that tradition (much like the previous record, Violator, also does), and so I feel like I might actually have something decent to say about it, unlike when I first listened to Violator.
www.pitchshifter.com (1998)
I do not know anywhere near enough about ’90s industrial or the British electronica scene to have any real idea of the context this record was made in but I can tell you it sounds insanely ’90s. Imagine a more political, perhaps slightly less articulate Nine Inch Nails, mixed with The Prodigy and maybe you …
Songs About Fucking (1987) by Big Black
What probably sounded unbelievably loud – not to mention offensive to a lot of people – has mellowed considerably nearly thirty years later. So much of this record (or even the band’s oeuvre, perhaps) has integrated into alternative rock and even some indie rock. Hell, it doesn’t even sound very noisy compared to what’s being …