I’ve been writing album/EP reviews for what seems like forever, but actually goes back to 1996, on my days writing for ROAR. This archive, like others, goes back as far as 2003. I don’t write as many album reviews as I used to, but they still get posted from time-to-time.
The title of this section comes from a track on The Afghan Whigs’ first album Big Top Halloween.
Opinion appears to have been sharply divided on this band ever since they first appeared on compilations well over a year ago. Many (including me) love the whole tongue-in-cheek aspect of the project, the fact that nothing strays outside the Zombie theme, and surprisingly, perhaps, that it does more than just straight EBM. Others can’t […]
It is hard to deny the influence Andy La Plegua, the man behind Combichrist (and also Scandy, Panzer A.G. and before that Icon of Coil and more besides), has had in goth/industrial clubs over the past couple of years. In the few years since Combichrist emerged, dancefloors have rocked to his tunes almost every night, […]
I’ll admit I was sceptical when I first heard of this. Yet another side project, with members of a band I love working with the musical brain behind another band that I used to be rather fond of.
I never quite know what to expect with Keef’s output. With the huge variety of influences – not only IDM, but also electronics, industrial, jazz, death metal and god knows what else – it sometimes leaves you with the feeling to not only expect the unexpected, but also to perhaps fear where he might take […]
I’ll come clean now: I was never a particular fan of older PN stuff. It always struck me as ‘spooky kids’ trying to be evil and scary, and instead looking all a bit silly. So it’s something of a surprise to hear this. It is the sound of a band transformed, into a world where […]
Skinny Puppy’s trimuphant return after a few years away three years back really was something special. OK, so The Greater Wrong of The Right wasn’t perfect, but it got better on repeated listens and the live show made the return all the sweeter – and perhaps more important still.
As I have noted before in recent reviews, the industrial noise scene seems to be stretching it’s boundaries ever further, with influences from other scenes creating fascinating new hybrids. And such is the case here, with an album that both strengthens the case for the industrial noise genre as it is, and also tries things […]
Christ, nearly a year already since the first album? Things have advanced somewhat since then for Tony Young – the man behind Autoclav 1.1 – following a number of triumphant live performances, not least his appearance at Infest in August, the profile has been raised quite a bit, and so there has been yet more […]
The more things change…the more things stay the same. Certainly that’s the feel that you get here, some three years since the last new album Hex-Angel (there has of course been a steady stream of compilations of older stuff in the meantime, so it is hardly as if we have had the chance to forget […]
Johan Van Roy has been at this music lark for some time now – nearly twenty years, in fact. And in all that time, he has written and released songs about the darker impulses of human nature, following a similar pattern that appears to have served him well and driven him to ever greater success. […]
Nothing is ever all that simple with Laibach. Providing a somewhat…different spin on popular music and culture for many years now, it did appear back in 2003 upon the release of WAT that they had perhaps tired of this, and released what was on face value a disarmingly straight industrial album. It spawned one massive […]
Of all the so-called ‘futurepop’ bands – which, lets be honest, was only ever the softer, more melodic end of the EBM spectrum – only Seabound over the past few years have been really that interesting. Rather than taking the usual route of dancefloor anthems that are all surface, and no feeling, with an illusion […]
It’s amazing how things change. I’m all for bands evolving, and changing, and perhaps even maturing. It isn’t always all that popular with the fans, who may like the first album or whatever, and want them to continue in that vein. The creative process doesn’t always work like that, though, and some artists vanish into […]
It has been nearly three years since last album Redemption, and on the first evidence of this album – an early version of the title track on the recent Das Bunker compilation – things were looking good for the new album.
A curious beast, this CD. It arrives – in promo format, anyway – in a clear slipcase, with the CD encased in a piece of sandpaper, with little in the way of information on it. Not that there is much to tell – the tracklisting is simply Parts 1 to 5 of Session 9, clearly […]
A reasonably new band from northern England, this – although at least one of the band members has prior involvements in other bands, and from the packaging, and the slick design and sound of the whole CD, it is clear even to the casual listener that this is a band that know what they are […]
As I have noted before, there are many different strands to the noise scene these days. Among the most straightforward of them all is Terrorfakt. Last album Cold Steel World was notable for its sheer power, even if it was a little one-dimensional at times. However this takes it to another level entirely – that […]
So where the hell to start? JP Anderson has been around a while. Firstly in the band The Shizit, who were Digital Hardcore but US-style. And fucking rocked. If you are aware of that band, it may not be entirely surprising to hear that Rabbit Junk is not all that far removed from them.
Another week, another noise album – despite it appearing to be a reasonably small “scene” there does seem to be a real vitality across the breadth of the noise spectrum at the moment, with release after release trying something just that little different, although not all are entirely successful in meeting what they are trying […]
Really, where the fuck did this come from? Beamed in apparently from the mid-nineties to the now, and still so fresh and current it stings. A one-man project from the North-Eastern US, seemingly it is also a one-man mision to bring all that was best about US industrial from a decade past to a whole […]
