In the realm of dark musical delights, 2013 has been quite a historic year: legends in their respective genres returned and/or reunited, while others marked the swan songs of their careers; iconic artists turned out some of their finest work, while some innovative up-and-comers set loose fresh and evil earworms on our collective brains. Honestly, it was damn near impossible for me to narrow the list down to just thirteen entries – a mere Top 10 was out of the question – and cutting names felt like chopping off my own extremities (which I'll admit would be an impressive journalistic statement, but could lead to unpleasant side effects I'd rather not deal with). Still, I found a way to make it work. Well... okay, I cheated, actually. More on that later. But for now, let's cycle back through 2013 – definitely a banner year for scary sounds! [Be sure to click on the titles for full album reviews.] 1. Maniac: Original Soundtrack If you associate old-school...
- 12/20/2013
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
Vancouver's ultra-dark electro band Öhm is the brainchild of industrial icons Chris Peterson and Craig Joseph Huxtable – both of whom are high-profile names in industrial music, having worked with iconic bands like Front Line Assembly, Unit 187, Decree, Noise Unit and Landscape Body Machine. The pair joined forces two years ago, partly as a creative outlet beyond the scope of their other projects, and also as a way of sharing their unique artistic vision. The team-up soon evolved into a legitimate band, and this month they released their self-titled debut album comprised of ten dark, scary heavy-beat Edm overtures dubbed “dark disco meets pop-electro.” One of the spookiest tracks on Öhm is the dystopian sci-fi nightmare “When Robots Fuck,” which became the subject of this animated short film by Geoff Mark, making its World Premiere right here. The cinematic atmospheres conjured by the band are paired with Mark's surreal, debris-littered apocalyptic landscapes,...
- 10/24/2013
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
Although he's most famously known as the drummer for iconic masked metallers Slipknot, Joey Jordison has also been a regular FEARnet favorite thanks to his many macabre side projects – including a stretch on the road with Rob Zombie and the reunion of legendary shock-rock unit Murderdolls, which he reanimated a few years ago with co-founder Wednesday 13. Jordison is still active with Slipknot, of course, but during a lengthy offline period (partly due to the death of bassist Paul Gray in 2010), he turned his creative energies from that band and focused instead on forming the industrial-metal supergroup Scar The Martyr – who have just unleashed their mammoth self-titled debut album. “I was working on new Slipknot material but I had to shelve it and wait until we all know we’re getting back together,” says Jordison. “But I couldn’t stop writing! I stayed in the studio because I had so many...
- 10/7/2013
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
German experimental music unit Individual Totem (a.k.a. Bernrd Madl and Mathias Knopp) have been fusing dark soundscapes and heavy industrial beats for over two decades now, but somehow managed to stay just under my radar during most of that time. After a few indie releases in the '90s, new material from the band became fairly scarce again, before they resurfaced with the full-length album Mothfly in 2007. That release included memorable tracks like “WWW,” which had once surfaced as a single many years earlier only to abruptly vanish from the scene. A quick listen to that record calls to mind iconic acts like Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly or Velvet Acid Christ, but with roots in earlier electronic pioneers like Tangerine Dream (whose music is familiar to fans of '80s horror movies like Near Dark and The Keep). The combination of those influences supports a very cinematic thread of dark fantasy storytelling,...
- 8/16/2013
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
Industrial icons Front Line Assembly, under the command of genre legend Bill Leeb, are veteran explorers of dark futuristic terrain – as evidenced last year with their epic soundtrack for Carbon Games' AirMech (read our review here). After that project, the band focused on an even more chilling fantasy landscape entirely of their own creation, in the form of their latest studio album Echogenetic, which makes its debut today via Metropolis Records. It also marks a return to the band's earlier all-synth phase, losing the industrial-metal riffage that had become an integral part of their sound over the past several albums through 2010's Improvised. Electronic. Device. In some ways Echogenetic recalls the band's classic album Tactical Neural Implant not only in its technique, but in its harsh, frightening tone. Also, with the infusion of new talent into the Fla team (Leeb is the sole founding member, with returning players Jeremy Inkel...
- 7/9/2013
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
Inspired by old-school electronic music, '80s video games, cartoons and other retro fantasies, Canadian duo Volt 9000 (alias Cory Gorski & Andrew Dobbels ) blend analog post-industrial experimentation with club-worthy beats, pop melodies and moody vocals, sometimes sprinkling the concoction with vintage movie & game samples and glitchy 8-bit accents; the end product is often a nostalgic freestyle for fans of classic gaming, synth sci-fi & horror soundtracks, and '80s & '90s pop culture, and has resonated well with fans of Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly (both of whom have new work out this year, by the way) and other landmark industrial acts. That style served the team well on their first albums Retrogenesis and Atomica, but for their third full-length release Conopoly, which drops tomorrow from Artoffact Records, the band focus their retro-futuristic powers on a much darker theme – namely a creepy near-future dystopia with roots in today's hot-button headlines. The...
- 6/3/2013
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
Dubstep, drumstep, glitchstep, chillstep, fill-in-the-blank-step... the electronic dance music field is growing at an exponential rate, leaving its underground roots far behind as some of my favorite established electro-rockers like Celldweller and Front Line Assembly incorporate modern Edm elements into their sound, metal bands mash up their riffs with dubstep elements (like Korn's collaboration with electro-house superstar Skrillex), and more genre crossovers are being born than I can possibly keep up with. The landscape is so overrun now that it takes an artist with unique skills to stand above the herd... and a dark and spooky image doesn't hurt either; it's certainly one way to get my attention. That finally happened this year, when I was introduced to the ominous team Blackburner, whose stage identities are concealed behind bizarre robotic killer rabbit suits with glowing Cylon eyes. If you're having trouble picturing that, I've included images and clips showing these bass-dropping bunny-borgs in action.
- 12/27/2012
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
Founded in the mid-'80s by industrial music pioneer Bill Leeb, Front Line Assembly (call 'em Fla for short) has always served as the soundtrack to a dark future of cyberpunk menace and death-dealing machines, so it's no stretch at all to imagine the band composing the music to an action-packed dystopian video game. I'm actually surprised it's taken so long for that marriage to happen, but thankfully it has, and to great success, with their recent involvement in Carbon Games' free-to-play real time strategy game AirMech. Now the game soundtrack has been been given the full studio treatment, and the experience reaches beyond the music itself to include new content that enhances the gaming experience. If you're unfamiliar with AirMech and the whole “free-to-play” concept, it's a pretty cool idea, offering a free downloadable multi-platform game in which players can choose to support the developers by purchasing upgrades and enhancements,...
- 12/5/2012
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
When we last checked in on dark industrial rock icons Front Line Assembly, they had just released their chilling and ass-kicking album Improvised Electronic Device. Now we've learned they're all set to take those new tunes on the road for their first North American tour in four years, with direct support from another electro-rock legend and fellow FEARnet fave, Germany's Die Krupps. Find out more about the tour after the jump. The 25-stop North American tour will kick off on May 15th in Canada (followed by a performance at Montreal's Festival Kinetik on May 19th), then across the Us through June 13th. In addition to Die Krupps (who have not toured the Us in fifteen years), Cyanotic and DJ?...
- 4/15/2011
- FEARnet
The brainchild of industrial music heavyweight Bill Leeb, Front Line Assembly has been plugging away in the genre since the mid-eighties – their prolific career punctuated with numerous lineup changes, a couple of hiatus periods, intermittent breakup rumors and so on... but they always snap back strong, as proven by their nerve-jangling new release Improvised Electronic Device, which rolls out today from Metropolis Records. As with every new album from this Vancouver-based unit, there are some familiar recurring motifs, plus inventive, disturbing new twists that never fail to grab listeners' attention. Read on for a closer examination of the latest creation from these sonic mad scientists... Leeb originally formed...
- 6/22/2010
- FEARnet
Industrial icons Front Line Assembly have announced their return in 2010 with the upcoming Ep release Shifting Through the Lens – the first single from their next full-length album, Improvised Electronic Device. The new material suggests a melding of two previous high-profile records: the muscular, metal-driven Millennium (featured prominently in the Dean Koontz adaptation Hideaway) and the breakthrough follow-up Hard Wired. There's more info about Fla's pending electro apocalypse after the jump... "Have you ever peered [through] a dark keyhole and saw something you were not supposed to?" mused Fla core member Bill Leeb, stating that the chilling vibe of Shifting Through the Lens "brought us together...
- 4/16/2010
- FEARnet
The remix artist Pogo continues to mess with sound and image, the better to make you shake your ass. (Even if you're just sitting at a desk.) Last time Pogo did some wonderful work with Pixar's Up to produce the bouncy Upular. Now he's remixing sound and video from Terminator 2 to create Skynet Symphonic. It's a tune with a decidedly harder edge (starting off a bit like something Front Line Assembly would once have done) though Edward Furlong's doe eyes soften the effect here and there. As Pogo says on the clip's YouTube page: Comprising nothing but small sounds recorded from the James Cameron masterpiece 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day', 'Skynet Symphonic' is my tribute to one of the greatest action features of all time! Each section is composed entirely of sounds from a major scene in the film. For example, the Terminator pounding on the fire escape door...
- 1/12/2010
- by Russ Fischer
- Slash Film
According to Candlelight Records, industrial metallers Fear Factory will be rolling out their seventh studio album Mechanized early next year. If the first single Powershifter is any indication, this release sounds like a return to the band's groundbreaking roots. Flip to the other side and find out more about their apocalyptic new creation... Mechanized also represents the reunion of frontman Burton C. Bell with the original guitarist Dino Cazares – after parting ways nearly six years ago – and also marks the return of Rhys Fulber (Front Line Assembly) on keys. They're joined by bassist Byron Stroud and the masterful Gene Hoglan (Strapping Young Lad) at the drumkit. Bell describes the product of...
- 11/20/2009
- FEARnet
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