Top 10 Power Noise albums of all time

This list was very difficult to choose; more so than my top 10 EBM albums of all time, which is odd since there is 10 times more EBM than there is power noise. The challenge was the top 5, which are all incredibly close. I could put them in a different order on a different day. Power noise has a lot of bad and boring artists, but those at the top are truly at the top and there is very little separating them.
10. Tarmvred: Subfusc
This oddly-named album by an oddly-named act from Sweden caught people by surprise when it emerged on French label Ad Noiseam in 2001. Tarmvred gradually builds up big layers of noise, occasionally inter-mixing them with retro video-game bleebs or crashing drum and bass inspired percussion. He uses genuinely original and interesting sounds and techniques to produce his music, and sadly doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything anymore. Bring back Tarmvred I say!
9. Xenonics K-30: Automated
This was a one-off collaboration between the best power noise artist in the world (Converter) and the best power electronics artist in the world (Navicon Torture Technologies). Was it any surprise it was brutally heavy and completely awesome? This album is a relentless, seething slab of industrial mayhem that crushes your spine, fries your brain, and dismembers your corpse. Jason Mantis of Malignant Records reckons track 3 of this album is one of the most perfect pieces of industrial noise ever made, and I think he’s right.

8. 5F-X: 5F_55 is Reflected to 5F-X
This is definitely the strangest album on the list. An odd band called 5F_55 put out two odd albums of glitch noisy music on Hands, with tracknames composed of ASCII computer code. Then they renamed themselves 5F-X and put out this great album. It’s not only cool because it never takes itself too seriously, but it is also extremely good music, from beginning to end. With some nods to German techno and Hymen-style IDM / electronica, this is also probably the most fun and accessible album on this list.
7. Converter: Shock Front
This album, the first by legendary Scott Sturgis aka Converter, hit the power noise scene like a bombshell when Ant-Zen released it in 1999. It was menacing, dirty, heavy as a tank and pulverised listeners. While it doesn’t have the diversity and production quality of the follow-up Blast Furnace, I actually rate Shock Front higher. It’s a much more focused and effective album, and stands up extremely strong today as one of the classics of the genre.
6. Synapscape: So What
This album for me summarises a time; the glory days of German label Ant-Zen, and the peak of power noise (late 90s / early noughties). While Synapscape are still going strong and putting out good albums, this album for me is what defined their sound. It’s not complex, it’s not subtle, it’s just big, thundering, crunchy, smashing power noise. It’s a sledgehammer of an album that knocks down walls and kicks your arse and the arse of anyone else in the way. The fact that it comes with a second cd of more downtempo / experimental music is gravy. They don’t quite make ‘em like this anymore.
5. Winterkaelte: Drum and Noise
I’ll never forget the first time I heard this album (and this band); I popped the new cd into my player on a seedy hungover Saturday morning, and was immediately swept up in a barrage of noise, a lightning storm of deep fried bits and zeroes, swept away amongst sparking power cables and malfunctioning power generators. Winterkaelte are undeniably the most noisy and “pure” band in this genre. There really is no melody or harmony to be found here folks, it’s just layers of intricately constructed harshness. And it’s absolutely fantastic. The predecessor Structures of Destruction is very strong also; recent works not so much.
4. Iszoloscope: Au Seuil du Neant
It’s surprising that not everybody rates this album as young Canadian talent Iszoloscope’s best. For me there’s not much competition; this album really helped revive the flagging power noise genre in 2003, when it was under threat from lack of innovation and untalented clones. This album is a staggering work of cold bleak noise from an artist at the top of his game, that drifts effortlessly from broken noisy beats (Skotophobique) to crushing chilling distorted techno (-28c And Falling) to monstrously brooding dark ambient (Iszoloscope Tomes Deux). A classic in every sense of the word. If you don’t believe me, listen for yourself.

3. Imminent Starvation: Nord
Not putting this album at #1, or even #2, was very hard for me. Imminent Starvation’s 1999 album Nord defined this genre, and the set the bar for every other act in the world. It is a perfectly constructed album, from the scraping and jarring intro, to the relentless battle-machine that is Tentack (still crushing industrial dancefloors to this very day), through to the baffling glitchy constructs around the middle of the album, to the long moody masterpiece that is Ire, to the last track, a crackly voice pleading over and over, “Please contact us, we are your friends”. This album changed my life.
2. SKET: Baikonur
I must admit that by 2006 I had basically given up on power noise. Converter was finished, Imminent and smashed up his mixing desk and had lost his way, and the only things coming out on Ant-Zen were either ambient (i.e. Ab Ovo) or terrible (anything by Hypnoskull and his ilk). Then along came SKET. This German act produces some of the most intelligent and interesting music in the world today. Perhaps it isn’t even power noise; they may have pushed the genre so far that they’ve broken its boundaries. Whatever it is, it’s absolutely brilliant, and yes, even better than Nord.
1. Converter: Exit Ritual
Exit Ritual? Not Shock Front or Blast Furnace? No, this is the best thing Converter has ever produced, Ant-Zen has ever released, and power noise has ever given birth to. It’s a very dark album, occasionally creeping up to the precipice of dark ambient or death industrial, but never slipping over the edge. It plays with your emotions, starting off atmospheric and meditative (DroneRitual), becoming fairly aggressive (Nightmare Machine), moving into a relaxing, tribal space (Gateway Rite), then grabs you and drags you into a pit of madness (Night Swallows Day). Sturgis was apparently taking a LOT of drugs when he made this, and it shows. Not in a pretentious psychedelic way, but in a more schizophrenic and chilling way. I first listened to this album while suffering heavy sleep deprivation on a train through crumbling East German towns, and it seriously wrecked my head, which few albums can do. This is as good as it gets.