I’ve been trailing this for a while, so it’s time I got on with it and posted it.

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While I still try and keep the broad focus of the music covered here to the wider sphere of industrial music, I also listen to other music – this year perhaps more than ever – and thus the spread here is perhaps a bit wider than you might otherwise expect. You know what, though? Try some of this music. Especially the stuff you don’t recognise or don’t know. Go for it – I love hearing new music that someone else has enthused about, trying to understand what’s so awesome about it. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it will take days or weeks to click, and hopefully, something here will do that to you.

Time to cue the music. You can listen along on Spotify or Youtube. Links to the right.

[Note: this has been tidied up a bit since the original posting, but the broad idea is still the same, and I’ve not amended the order or opinions!]

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/Solitary Experiments
/Mind Over Matter
/Out Of Line

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Never was much of a fan of the old stuff by this band, but their EP/Remix album Cause and Effect from the start of 2004 was a somewhat impressive re-invention, with growled vocals retired for a more melodic and darker approach – and that has been perpetuated here. The live album that comes with it is pretty effective, too.

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/65daysofstatic
/One Time for All Time
/Monotreme Records

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65DoS continue their upward curve into a world that no other band seems to inhabit. A band tipped by many for bigger and greater things, and 2006 should be the year where that happens.

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/1349
/Hellfire
/Candlelight Records

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Not a new band, but nothing on their previous albums had prepared us for something this good. Unintelligible vocals machine-gun blast beats and walls of guitars with all kinds of electronics filling the remaining gaps. They may look a little silly in their corpsepaint, but frankly Black Metal doesn’t get much better – or more evil – than this.

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/Combichrist
/Everybody Hates You
/Out of Line

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Probably the top dancefloor album of the year, let alone single(s), there are that many tracks from this now in regular rotation. Larger than life and above all, FUN, it feels like Gorillaz if they were fed loads of ‘pills and force-fed industrial tuneage. If you somehow haven’t heard this album and are a regular club-goer, I’d love to know how.

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/Interlock
/Crisis//Reinvention
/Anticulture Records

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A long time coming, and issues during the year with a change of vocalist, but it appears not to have affected them one bit. A superb fusion of (death) metal and industrial electronics, to the point that neither side of it feels tacked on. Add that to the unusual and effective male-female twin vocals, the ability of the band to slow things down and still make it work, and we have one of the more original releases of the year.

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/Opeth
/Ghost Reveries
/Roadrunner Records

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The sheer invention of this band is astonishing. After a couple of more subdued albums, the more metallic side of the band is back, and…wow. An involved listen, yes. But worth it alone for opening track Ghost of Perdition. Best metal album of the year by miles.

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/Cyanotic
/Transhuman
/Glitch Mode Recordings

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Yeah, I know I keep carping on about this album and have been since it was released in the spring. But I mean what I have said. This is the best industrial album in years, a perfect mix of dancefloor rage, pounding beats and cerebral electronics all merged into a thrilling whole. Impossible to pick individual highlights as every track is as good as the last, this remains the only album I have ever reviewed to give full marks to.