Great Bandcamp labels you should check out

Ant-Zen and Hymen
This one is a no-brainer; Ant-Zen is one of the best if not the best record labels in the world for power noise, and its sister label Hymen is arguable the best IDM / electronica label in the world (yes I know about Warp Records, I don't think they're anywhere near as good as Hymen, I don't care how sacriligeous that is). Both labels have pretty much their entire discography of the last 10 years on Bandcamp, where you can stream and listen to however much you want for as long as you want with no ads, or buy albums for a very cheap price (usually about $10 per album), with a big chunk going to the artist. How good is that! Want to find out which Synapscape album is the best? Keen to finally discover the tribal sounds of This Morn Omina or Tzolk'in? Knock yourself out!

Love Hz
This is a recent discovery of mine. It's a bandcamp-only label, and it is really interesting and unique music and I am totally in love with it. Love Hz (get it? cute title huh) produces basically hardcore techno, with a cinematic / emotional / atmospheric feel to it. Some strings, pianos, pads, etc, running alongside dark crunching German / Dutch style hardcore techno make for a wonderful combination. Even the aggressive German hardcore legend Stormtrooper released an EP on Love Hz, and it is fantastic. Definitely one to watch!

Cryo Chamber
This label was started by Simon Heath aka the busy dark ambient act Atrium Carceri, who put out a whole bunch of good albums on Swedish juggernaut Cold Meat Industry before they went into indefinite hibernation. I thought they were a bandcamp only label (especially as they advertise themselves as a 24 bit label, and audio CDs only store music at 16 bit resolution), but it seems they put out CDs as well. Anyway, Mr Atrium Carceri has put out a couple of recent albums on this label, a cool science-fiction themed ambient side project of his called Sabled Sun has put out a few albums, plus a whole bunch of new up and coming dark ambient artists have albums released here also. I guess they all have to find a new home now that Cold Meat is gone... and despite the name, Cryo Chamber seems to be a very warm and welcoming home. Go get yer dark ambient on right now dammit!

Industrial Propaganda Records
Well this label does what it says on the tin: it releases big, bad, ballsy hardcore industrial techno. Mainly via EPs, plus some compilations, and some old fashioned mixes. I don't recognise most of the bands on this label but who cares, they all sound awesome!

Great Mixcloud channels you should follow

I've raved enough about how much I love Mixcloud. If you love Mixcloud too, make sure to check out and/or follow these cloudcasts:

Headphone Commute
This one is a no-brainer; Headphone Commute is a pretty serious weekly podcast for ambient, experimental, IDM, cinematic, etc music. They have a sizeable presence outside Mixcloud, and is one of the top 20 Mixcloud channels, with over 25,000 (!!) followers. The casts are usually guest DJs and I find they cover the experimental, ambient and cinematic end of things very well, the IDM and electronica end of things not quite so well. Still definitely worth following though, and also worth having a look through their back catalogue of mixes. The guest mix by Tympanik Audio / Ad Noiseam ambient artist Subheim is superb!

Low Light Mixes
This cast specialises in the very minimal ambient end of things, and does a really good job. Casts are usually "themed", e.g. based around the sun, air, ice, and so on, which is a bit wanky, but nice.

Led Manville
This Spanish fellow is a very solid DJ, who can beat and keymatch with ease. His regular mixes are of an exceptional level of quality, and he's also produced a whole bunch of fun industrial / synthpop mashups (though those seem to live mainly on youtube).

Neuromancer
This crazy Columbian is my favourite "hard" DJ on mixcloud. He plays a mix of club industrial and hardcore techno, and completely rocks! I wish he put out mixes more often (though I can't talk, I only put one up every few months).

End: The DJ
The most famous industrial DJ in the world. If you want to hear where industrial club music (e.g. EBM, aggrotech) is up to, listen to End: The DJ. End and Led Manville are currently the best in the world at this stuff.

Thingstocome aka The Horrorist
I don't actually love The Horrorist's music (I like a few tracks here and there but a lot of doesn't do much for me). However, he is one hell of a DJ. He plays regularly in New York and uploads his mixes pretty often, which are a weird but awesome combination of weird old acid, techno, electro and old-school EBM.

Leon Tranter aka DJ Dasein
Bit of blatant self-promotion... that's me! Go follow if you haven't already.

We live in a good era: Mixcloud and Bandcamp

I'm going to go against the overall trend of cynicism and gloom that pervades the industrial (and pretty much every other music) community, and say that right now we are living in an extremely good era. Well, definitely a great era for fans / listeners, maybe not such a great one for artists, labels and producers: that's a complex discussion for another day.

There are two well-developed and extremely useful tools around now that make it easy to research, discover and listen to music (new and old, but especially new).

The first of these is Mixcloud. I goddam love Mixcloud so much. I have my own Mixcloud account, and every few months I drag my lazy bum to the decks and record and upload a mix. But more importantly, I follow about 70 DJs / cloudcasters on Mixcloud, and every day or two I listen to a mix they have uploaded. I have discovered an amazing amount of exciting music by doing this, and cannot recommend it enough. If you don't know who to follow or where to start, just type in a genre name and see what comes up, or start clicking on mixes in the main news feed until you find something you like. The refreshing thing about Mixcloud is there is a huge amount of really good mixes and cloudcasters in the non-mainstream end of music, especially in the ambient and experimental area.

The next one is Bandcamp. Digital music distribution has been around for quite a long time, but Bandcamp is a refreshing alternative to the lazy bloated juggernauts that come to mind (Apple, Amazon, Google). There are many things to like about this channel. Firstly, Bandcamp lets you download your music DRM free, in whatever format you like, including FLAC, and we like FLAC because it's lossless, right? Right. Secondly, Bandcamp takes a very small cut: 15% of digital sales, and 10% of merchandise sales. My understanding of the big bastards is that you are lucky to see 50% of your sale price as royalties. Thirdly, and for me most importantly, I really like how Bandcamp strongly supports the concept of labels. If I want to hear some of the music that Ant-Zen put out last year, (because I love Ant-Zen and so should you), I don't have to dig around trying to find 20 websites or bandcamp sites for all these different bands, I can just go to the Ant-Zen Bandcamp site and all of their releases are right there. And not just the new ones; I can find out what that that weird Philip Munch solo album from a few years ago sounded like, or whether Nin Kuji is worth the fuss that's been made over him, or relive the fun of Morgenstern's "Cold" (ah good times). And then of course, if you like them, you can buy, for pretty damn cheap too: usually $10 or $11 per album, much less than the $19 or so that ripoff  iTunes charges Australians, which is a fourth thing to like about Bandcamp.

So if you haven't already, start using these great tools! There is plenty of amazing music out there, despite the predictable cynicism of the boring naysayers and tiresome gloom merchants. In the next week or so I'm going to run through some of the best finds on those two great sites.

Top 10 Power Electronics albums

Power Electronics is a genre I don't listen to much anymore. I discovered it via Navicon Torture Technologies' 2001 album Scenes from the Next Millenium (an excellent "gateway drug" for the genre), fell in love with it, then a few years later lost interest in it. I rarely listen to it nowadays, but there are a few artists and albums that still rock my world. It is for me a genre completely dominated by one artist, and one record label, to an extent rarely seen. Also, yes I am pefectly aware that there is no Whitehouse, Genocide Organ or Con-Dom in this list and no it is not a mistake. I think Whitehouse put on a good live show and I understand their influence and importance but their music doesn't do much for me. Genocide Organ and Con-Dom I do not rate at all. Also: I can't quite explain why, but I don't feel Haus Arafna's "Children of God" counts as power electronics. If it did, it would be on this list, probably around 6 or 7.

10. Brigther Death Now: May All Be Dead (Cold Meat Industry, vinyl release 1998, CD release 2000). I’m much more of a fan of the early Brighter Death Now albums, which were thoroughly death industrial, rather than the harsh noise / power electronics direction that the later albums took. However the first couple of power electronics albums Roger Karmanik put out (May All Be Dead and Innerwar) were pretty good, before the decline set in (Obsessis and 90% of everything after that). It was a close call between those two albums, but May All Be Dead just beat Innerwar with the trump card of hearing crazy Roger scream “I wish I was a little girl!”. Don't tell me that's not super creepy.
9. Control: Control (Malignant / Black Plagve 1999). Thomas Garrison aka Control has been a mainstay of the US power electronics scene for quite some time, and is a solid performer. He’s released albums all over the place, on his own and other labels (he’s even put out a couple of interesting ones on Ant-Zen recently), and most of them don’t disappoint. I really like the first self-titled one released many years ago on the mighty Malignant Records, though. It had a distinctive and interesting tone that got a little lost on later works. Maybe it was Phil Easter’s mastering talents that brought it out? It’s possible. (Interesting trivia: Thomas Garrison has recently become quite respected as a mastering engineer himself, now doing work for Malignant amongst other labels).
8. Propergol: Renegade (Tesco Organisation, 2001). I’ll freely admit that French act Propergol’s albums don’t follow most of the trademarks of power electronics. However, they play at power electronics festivals, they appear on power electronics compilations, and I feel they just belong here. And they are really great. Other releases United States and Program Vengeance are fantastic albums, but the cult classic Renegade stands out from the pack. This is menacing, vicious music, that still has a subtlety that many of the other acts in this style do not understand and cannot replicate.
7. IRM: Oedipus Dethroned (Cold Meat Industry, 2000). This is old-school Swedish power electronics, executed very well. What I like about IRM is that, like Anenzephalia, he doesn’t overdo the distortion on the vocals. OK so maybe it makes it less “PURE” and “TROO” for the posers in their laughable army gear and balaclavas, but I’m happy alienating them anyway. IRM displays more talent in one track than most “cult” power electronics band have in their entire discographies. Apparently his recent works (which I still have yet to get my hands on) are awesome as well. Now that Navicon Torture Technologies has called it quits, IRM is the only really innovative and interesting artist still operating in the genre.
6. Navicon Torture Technologies: Power Romance (Cranial Fracture Recordings, 2002). This strange album has been described as existing in a genre entirely of its own, power romance. I’ll leave the genre debates for people who actually care about what we call things. This is, as Leech intended it, a very emotionally intense album, that switches between creepy, to cathartic, to abrasive, to romantic, to aggressive, quite effortlessly. A bewildering, original and essential album. (I should disclose that I’m a bit biased, since I was honoured to have the opportunity to release this album on my own record label, Cranial Fracture Recordings, many years ago. But it is really amazing).
5. Anenzephalia: Anenzephalia (Cold Meat Industry / Death Factory, 2001). There is a rumor that Anenzephalia are a side project of the overrated Genocide Organ. Completely untrue! Anenzephalia are their own band and stand on their own two feet (I think one of the guys from Genocide Organ helps with live shows or something). Anyway, skip the unimpressive Nohaem ambient album, go past the obligatory "Live in Russia" release every second band seems to put out, and head straight to this self-titled bad boy. This has some of the best vocals and lyrics in the genre, and more bad-arse samples than you can handle. The opening track is subtle but still powerful and very atmospheric (evidence below) Classic!

4. Ex.Order: War Within Breath (Malignant Records, 2001). This project is where the guys from German dark ambient act Inade go to release all their tension. This fine album from Malignant Records pulverises listeners like a Terminator from the future; pulses of deep-fried static noise and barrages of sonic tactical missiles reduce all resistance to smouldering rubble. Completely industrial and completely awesome.
3. Navicon Torture Technologies: Scenes from the Next Millenium (Malignant Records, 2001). This is where it all started for me; the first power electronics album and the first Navicon album I heard. It’s become a cliché, but listening to this utterly brutal and corrosive album really was a life-changing experience. These three top NTT albums stand so far above the rest it is difficult to comprehend the distance. There are 14 tracks here and they are all gold. Why people rate Genocide Organ higher than this material I cannot fathom. This, War Within Breath or Oedipus Dethroned are excellent introductions to the genre.
2. Navicon Torture Technologies: Gospels of the Gash (Malignant Records, 2009). Deciding which of the top two albums gets the number 1 spot was a hard decision. Gospels of the Gash is probably the most diverse NTT album, and one of the most interesting and enjoyable (in the strange way that listening to any NTT is ever enjoyable). This is one of those albums so good that I listen to it very rarely, to make sure I never get sick of it. The fact that it is the final chapter in the amazing career of this artist lends it an additional poignancy.
1. Navicon Torture Technologies: Church of Dead Girls (Malignant Records, 2002). This makes Brighter Death Now's "Innerwar" sound like a Wiggles best-of. If you want to hear the most horrible, intense, hate-filled music anybody has ever created, listen to this album. If you don’t, then don’t go anywhere near this, whatever you do. It will leave permanent scars.

Keef Baker, I love your music but you're wrong.

I love Keef Baker. Well, I love Keef Baker's music. If you don't know him, he's a really good IDM / electronica artist who has had a bunch of great albums released on Hymen, n5MD and Ad Noiseam. Anyway, he also has a music blog, and recently published a post entitled "A Metaphor for the Decline of Industrial Music". Go have a read. I think it's a thoughtful and well-written article, though I think it's completely wrong. To be more specific, I think it contains some interesting and truthful ideas, but I do not think he puts forward any reasonable case for the "decline of industrial music" (a strange concept something I've been hearing loads and loads about ever since I started listening to industrial music, which was around 1994... wow, it seems like it's dying a particularly slow death!).

The metaphor he uses is that of abstract versus cat pictures. Someone becomes interested in abstract art, and then becomes disillusioned because lots of people start putting out cat pictures and calling them abstract art. Hence, the decline and fall of abstract art. The metaphor is that there is so much junk non-industrial music around, calling itself industrial music, that the overall genre collapses upon itself in a pile of crap.

There are a number of problems with this line of reasoning, but the main problem is that it confuses what something is, with what it is called. In Keef Baker’s metaphor, why did the abstract art fan become saddened by the cat pictures, irregardless of what people were calling them? Here’s a metaphor that describes how I see the situation.

I’m an abstract art fan (i.e. where abstract art represents industrial music). I’m happy because every weekend I go to a local art gallery and check out the new great abstract art paintings. Every weekend there are new ones and they’re generally really good. After a few weeks I notice that a gallery called “Abstract Art World!” opens up across the road, and it’s full of cat paintings. I shrug my shoulders and go into the gallery that has actual abstract art, which I love, and it’s still there and still great. Next week there are another half dozen more galleries opening up, all claiming to be full of abstract art, and all full of cat paintings. I again ignore them and go check out the gallery I love which still has amazing new abstract art.

You could continue this metaphor to any extreme you like, where every gallery, or even building in the world is full of cat paintings claiming to be abstract art. And as long as my favourite gallery is there, week after week, full of great new abstract artworks, then I should be happy, and my life is not affected one tiny bit. So it would make no sense to talk about the decline of abstract art, just as it makes no sense to me to talk about the decline of industrial music.

Now the obvious retort would be “Of course it’s declining! At the beginning, there was great abstract art (industrial music), but now it’s 1% abstract art and 99% cat paintings!” (fake industrial music). No, it’s not. Assuming that either a) anyone sensible and informed can understand what actual abstract art is, or b) abstract art is simply whatever I declare it to be (I’m happy with either of those options), then the amount of abstract art (industrial music) has not changed one bit. If (a) is true, then all the cat painting people are wrong and lying when they say they are making abstract art. And if they’re full of shit, why would I care what they say? If (b) is true, then music genres are entirely subjective. In which case, I can invent away any problems I like by just redrawing what I constitute abstract art to be: starting by excluding cat paintings would be a sensible first step.

The only way you’re in trouble is if you believe (c), which is that the overall sum of human opinions form the truth of what constitutes a genre name. So the vast masses of cat painting fans have in fact “reclaimed” the term “abstract art”, and the art as you understand it doesn’t meaningfully exist anymore. But if you’ve fallen for this “socially constructed” guff, then you can just socially disassemble the problem yourself too: invent a new genre name, call it “blabstract art”, and declare that you love “blabstract art”, which is what used to be abstract art. In which case, abstract art is dead, but has been reborn as a healthy, vibrant “blabstract art” movement.

“But that’s just shuffling words around!” would be the reply. “It doesn’t help save abstract art / industrial music!”. Indeed, which shows the foolishness of the argument in the first place: a problem of words, not of music. Industrial music is perfectly well and healthy. If you go to discogs.com, and inspect the release roster of the quality industrial music labels out there (Malignant, Hymen, Ant-Zen, Hands, Ad Noiseam, n5MD, Tympanik), you’ll find an extraordinary amount of amazingly good and completely “industrial” (whatever that means) music was released in 2013; I would say just as much, as in any other recent year. I’ll be posting my best of 2013 soon, and it’s really hard picking just 10 amazing albums from last year. Sure there has also been a lot of crap. But we remember Sturgeon’s Law, don’t we? It applies to everything, including industrial music. You can accept the legions of Suicide Commando clones (even Johan has now become a sad clone of himself) as the 90% of crap in industrial music, or shuffle them into a different genre, it doesn’t matter. There is still a core of great industrial music being produced and released, and it’s even easier to find and access it than ever before. There might be a decline in the accuracy of terminology around industrial music (I actually wouldn’t say there is anyway, since the term has always been nebulous and ill-defined), but there certainly isn’t any decline in the quality of the music. You would think of all people, someone putting out great industrial music would realise this.

Top industrial bands to watch in 2014

Dead When I Found Her
Portland one-man act Dead When I Found Her had been attracting attention for a while, and I recently got around to picking up their second album (released 2012), Rag Doll Blues. It was an enormously fresh and invigorating blast of wind into the musty air of EBM, and I'd say the best EBM album since Mind.In.A.Box's Crossroads in 2007 (or maybe even since their 2005 masterpiece, Dreamweb). Suffice to say I was very pleased that the hype was not misplaced. If you haven't already discovered Dead When I Found Her, go and check them out. I have a strong feeling that there are seriously great things to come from Mr. Michael Holloway. (Let's ignore for the moment the fact that he recently did a cassette only release of covers, sigh).

Stendeck
I don't have any particular evidence that Stendeck will be putting out any releases in 2014, but I really, really hope he does. Stendeck for me is now up there with Totakeke as one of the most exciting IDM / electronic artists around. I completely loved his last two albums (Scintilla and Sonnambula, both released on Tympanik Audio), I love his sound, and I can't rave enough about how good he is. Get on board goddammit if you haven't already!

Youth Code

Youth Code are a seriously hyped-up band at the moment. They’re a new two-piece from the US doing really raw minimal 80s style EBM and a lot of people like them. To further cement their “cult” and/or “underground” crediblities, they have released their debut album only on vinyl (le sigh). I’m not exactly a vinyl nut: I don’t even own a record player. But from what I’ve heard on bandcamp, they are actually pretty good and worthy of (at least some of) the hype. It remains to be seen if they will get swallowed up by hype and over-expectations, or if they will actually deliver... some people seem to treat them as the final divine salvation of EBM as a genre, but me? I’m actually more excited about the prospect of a new Seabound album coming out soon, as unfashionable as that might be in certain circles. Speaking of which...

Seabound
Seabound are great. I thought they were finished. But they have a new album coming out really soon. You should get it. That's all that needs to be said there really!

Nao
Nao are a French industrial band. They play crazy intense instrumental industrial music with drums and guitars, and they release albums on the Ant-Zen label. And they are really, really good. They have a new album, coming out on Ant-Zen, really, really soon. I am really, really excited about this. You really, really should go and check them out. They have their own unique sound and it is a Good Sound.
(update: since I started writing this post, it has actually been released, and from what I've heard on bandcamp, it is, as expected, really really good).

Minimal Industrial mix and commentary

I recently recorded and published a mix of Minimal Industrial on my Mixcloud account. This was a mix I did when I supported a Sydney show of one-time Neubauten member Gudrun Gut, on her Australian tour. Here is some commentary on the tracks I chose.

Kirlian Camera: The Unreachable One. This is a band which can be very hit and miss, but when they hit, you know about it. This is the first track off their 2000 album Still Air (which I paid a ridiculous amount of money for at Ripoff I mean Redeye Records). I’ve only heard a small part of their large discography but from what I know, it’s their best track or close to it.

Calva y Nada: Was Ist. I love this band with a burning passion, and put this track’s album (Monologue Eines Baumes) at #2 on my 10 most underrated industrial albums ever. Unique, creepy and completely awesome in every way.

Haus Arafna: Mein Leben. Nicolas Chevreux, manager of the prolific and respected label Ad Noiseam, once called Haus Arafna “the meanest band on the planet”. This track is fairly tame compared to the other brutal material on their first two albums, and actually more resembles their quirky and cool side project Novemeber Noevelet (coming up shortly). Apparently this duo (who run Haus Arafna’s cult record label Galakthorro) are still putting out strong material… I need to catch up! A great minimal track from a great respected band.

November Noevelet: The less prolific project from Mr and Mrs Arafna (that is actually what they refer to themselves as). I was quite excited to dust off my copy of From Heaven on Earth and play a track from it, as it doesn’t get heard anywhere very often. Mrs Arafna does most of the vocals on this project (while Mr Arafna does them on their main project).

F/A/V: Rentnerbunker. F/A/V (aka Feinde Auf Valium, aka Enemies on Valium) put out a few really good and largely overlooked albums around the turn of the century, on Mental Ulcer Forges (yes, the label run by Rudy Ratzinger aka Wumpscut…but we won’t hold that against F/A/V, right?). What I like about F/A/V is that he can do some really good fast tracks, and then pull the tempo way back and do a really good slow one, like this. Probably the best track of his self-titled album or any of his albums, really.

Anaesth: !NnoWwarMmix!. Anaesth are an obscure flash-in-the-pan act that should have got a mention on my “Whatever happened to...?” post. This French solo act did one album also on Mental Ulcer Forges, then promptly disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The album doesn’t hold up well from beginning to end (due to some very long weaker tracks), but this opening track is immensely powerful. Watch for the great transition around halfway through the track (about 24:50) where the tempo jumps up. I figured this transition would serve well as a launch point for the faster electro tracks in the second half of the mix.

Nullgrad: Buran. Nullgrad are a recent discovery (and the most recently released track in this mix, having only come out a few years ago), and have released some nice albums on German power noise label Hands Productions. It’s nicely reminiscent of 80s space exploration videos. The album (The Shepherds Satellite) also has a great longer remix of this track, and is worth checking out.

Nitzer Ebb: Join in the Chant. All that needs to be said here is that this is still one of the best EBM tracks ever recorded by one of the best EBM bands in history. That bassline... unbelievable. That Total Age (which made my top 10 EBM albums list) sounds just as powerful 25 years on as the day it was released.

The Horrorist: 13 Dobermans. I’ll be totally honest: I don’t really love the style and schtick of the Horrorist. I see what he’s doing, and that’s he’s pretty good at it, but a lot of his music doesn’t do much for me (it reminds me too much of crappy late 90s electroclash). But for some reason, I love this track. Something about the combination of the music and the lyrics really works. Putting this Horrorist track right after Nitzer Ebb makes it really clear how influential the latter were…

Front Line Assembly: Mutate. Have I mentioned how much I love early Front Line Assembly? In case I havent’t: I love early Front Line Assembly (I love a lot of their later stuff too, for what it’s worth). Grim, minimal, instrumental EBM by the masters. This is the first track off the Corroded Disorder release, which I thought was just an aggregate of the tracks off the very early Corrosion and Disorder albums, though according to Discogs this track wasn’t on either of those albums. Weird… but oh well, who cares, it rocks! I particularly love the snare drum sound in this track: it is pure 80s EBM.

What happened to power noise?

OK here's the 'rise and fall' of the niche cult sub-genre of industrial known as power noise. This stuff arose in the early nineties when a young German label Ant-Zen started putting out some very distorted and aggressive electronic music. People started really taking notice of it when they issued a double CD compilation "Ant-Hology" on their 5 year anniversary. Here was a collection of great music which really put Ant-Zen on the map, especially with the incredible live recording of "Tentack" by Imminent Starvation. Tentack is a brutal, beautiful, musical juggernaut, that steamrollers anyone foolish to stand in its way, and defined the style perfectly.

Several other acts (almost all German or Belgian) made impressions on this compilation, like Synapscape, Hypnoskull, PAL, and Morgenstern. These acts would all go on to put out numerous releases on Ant-Zen.
Also around this time, another German label called Hands started putting out power noise CDs in bizarre cardboard contraptions that made it difficult (especially for newcomers) to get the cd out without damaging it (hence the nickname 'Hands scratch-pack'). If anything, the music put out on Hands was even more harsh and abrasive than that put out by Ant-Zen, spearheaded by the rumored mastermind behind the mysterious label, Winterkaelte. Their sound was bordering on white noise, but it was about as good as noise got, and they quickly established a cult following.

However the genre really emerged onto the industrial scene with the rise of a quiet, unassuming American, Scott Sturgis, and his project Converter. Here was power noise at its most shocking, brutal and brilliant, and he redefined the landscape of this sound. Converter started getting played at goth/industrial clubs, he was remixing and appearing on compilations, and headlining festivals in Germany like Maschinenfest. He was quickly joined by another brilliant young talent from Canada, Iszoloscope, who jumped ship from small Belgian label Spectre to join the Ant-Zen wrecking crew.

Suddenly it seemed everyone was wearing a black hoodie with a small ant and some japanese characters on it. There were Ant-Zen bags, Ant-Zen t-shirts, Ant-Zen mugs, you name it. Deleted Hypnoskull cds started selling for ridiculous amounts on Ebay. Converter's "Death Time" would get played at every club you went to. Iszoloscope's "Au Seuil du Neant" was hailed as the new masterpiece of the genre. The new power noise cultists started attacking EBM and its fans as "soft" and "weak", and were of course all starting up their own home-made power noise projects on their PCs in Fruity Loops. But the bubble had expanded too quickly. Imminent Starvation declared he was sick of "repetitive power noise" music, smashed his mixer into a thousand pieces, and started making strange incomprehensible glitch music. The glut of new power noise bands started getting bad reviews on industrial websites, since many of them were, quite frankly, terrible. The endless barrages of noise released on Hands were becoming tiresome. Ant-Zen put out some cds which were of questionable quality (the recent Hypnoskull albums are in fact some of the worst rubbish I've ever heard.) Was there anything left in power noise? Is there a limit to what you can do with distorted kick drums and abrasive noise? In 2003 Converter put out a very slow, dark album, Exit Ritual, which many power noise purists attacked but I actually think was his best work, since he was taking it somewhere different. Hands has found some new form in the last few years, especially with the excellent 5FX project, and Synapscape and Morgenstern continue to plod along, putting out good but not great releases every couple of years. Winterkaelte popped their head up recently to put out another album which had nothing wrong with it, but featured nothing really new or interesting.

Power noise isn't dead, but it's not the force it used to be. I don't play it much at clubs anymore. It has largely been replaced by the new twin forces of Aggrotech (e.g. Suicide Commando, Hocico) and what I guess you could call Techno Body Music (Modulate, Nachtmahr, Noisuf-X). Which is of course fine; those genres have some good artists and tracks too. I'm pretty sure the Converter project is dead and buried, which is sad, since he really was the best there ever was.

So why did it fall? I think it can be partly explained by the whole bubble thing, i.e. growing too big too quickly, resulting in a glut of sub-ordinary imitators. The unfriendliness of the sound didn't help any either. But the self-righteous attitude of the die-hard fans was I think a major factor. Power noise "cultists" display many of the very worst attributes of music snobs, spending more on t-shirts and hoodies than they did on albums to show off how cool they are, and aggressively deriding any other music styles than their own (sadly enough, other industrial styles came in for especially venemous attacks; as Max Weber showed 100 years ago, the two groups that hate each other the most are the ones closest together). Hmm, maybe I've been a little guilty of that from time to time. Hopefully I'm becoming less cynical and more accomodating in my old age :) Anyway, as I listen to my dusty old Ant-Hology cd to relive the old times, here's to you, power noise, old friend. Maybe the world just wasn't quite ready for you yet :)

Classic power noise albums you should hear / own:
Imminent Starvation's "Nord". Converter's "Blast Furnace" or "Exit Ritual". Iszoloscope's "Au Seuil du Neant". Winterkaelte's "Drum and Noise".

The three best EBM bands of the past decade

When most people think of EBM (Electronic Body Music, the staple style played at many goth / industrial clubs these days), they think of the old stalwarts of the genre such as Front 242 and Leather Strip. Or they may have been swept up in the "futurepop" craze that came later when bands like VNV Nation, Covenant and Assemblage 23 dominated dancefloors. However there are a few bands that've proudly carried the EBM flag and produced some awesome music over the last ten years.

Neuroticfish
I wasn't very impressed with Neuroticfish's debut No Instruments when it came out in 1999. However the Velocity single follow-up was pretty damn catchy and I decided to give them another chance when they put out Le Chansons de Neurotique in 2002. It turned out to be one of the best EBM albums ever made. If you are even a bit interested in electro-industrial music, you simply must have this album. It features a fairly stripped down sound, great vocals, and some very catchy songs including the classic single Prostitute. In 2005 they released Gelb, which was a good album but not as good as their previous work. Neuroticfish have sadly announced the project is closed, marked by "A Greater Good" 2cd retrospective.
Signature songs: M.F.A.P.L, Velocity, Prostitute
Defining album: Le Chansons de Neurotique

Seabound
This German band grabbed a lot of attention in 2001 with their strangely named album "No Sleep Demon", released on the powerhouse German label Dependent Records. Striding a fine line between classic German EBM and some very catchy synthpop, it remains a solid album and a very impressive debut. In 2004 they put out Beyond Flatline, which showed a definite maturity. The sound quality was better, the lyrics more serious, and a few songs were showing a darker, harder edge. I still love this album and listen to it regularly. 2006 saw the release of Double Crosser. This is a continuation of the sound on Beyond Flatline, but the album is possibly even darker; it even included the beautifully venemous song Traitor (previously buried as a b-side on the Poisonous Friend single). Recently they put out When Black Beats Blue, a collection of rarities and remixes, which is simply stunning.
Signature songs: Hooked, Poisonous Friend, Domination
Defining album: Beyond Flatline

Mind.In.A.Box
A friend whose music opinion I respect urged me a few years ago to listen to a band I'd never heard of, Mind.In.A.Box and their album "Dreamweb". So I did. It took me a few listenings to realise it, but it turns out I had come across the best EBM album ever made. This masterpiece both revives and redefines the genre. It combines old and new, soft and hard, simple and complex. Dreamweb was their second work; I quickly bought their first album Lost Alone, and it was fantastic (though not as good as Dreamweb). Recently they put out Crossroads, which is an amazing album and almost as good as Dreamweb (the opening track has to be heard to be believed). This humble and little-known Austrian duo with their roots in Amiga computer game music are putting out some of the best electronic music on the planet at the moment. They may not have many "club hits", but they write music that puts their peers to shame.
Signature songs: Lost Alone 2, Machine Run, Into the Light.
Defining album: Dreamweb