Whatever happened to... ?

Here are some examples of industrial artists that have sadly vanished without much of a trace, when it seemed like they had so much more to offer the world.

RAAN

To this day RAAN has put out one and only one release, of any kind, in any format, and it is an absolute doozy. RAAN’s album "TheNacrasti” was released 13 years ago in 2001 and is still easily one of the top dark ambient albums ever made by anyone. It came in at #7 in my top 10, and on some other day I could rank it higher. I still listen to it regularly and it has lost exactly 0% of its potence. Why not more material, RAAN? As you can see by their discogs page, there is literally nothing else. The only glimpse we have that we may ever see anything more is a track on a Malignant Records free online compilation, Malignant Antibodies, released in 2012. Thirteen years is certainly an extremely long time between drinks, but dare I to dream? I think I should not, lest I get my hopes up and they get cruelly dashed!

Tarmvred

After some singles and EPs, Tarmvred stormed onto the power noise scene with his powerful album Subfusc (released on the respected AdNoiseam label, still going strong to this day) in 2001. This was not only a high quality album but an exciting one because Tarmvred managed to forge his own unique sound, particularly refreshing in an era of Hypnoskull clones plugging boring drum loops through a distortion pedal and expecting adulation. This was followed up by a split with Needle Sharing and Panacea (I hate both those bands so I won’t talk about that release), and a co-headlining tour with the now legendary Iszoloscope (resulting in the excellent Tarmvred and Iszoloscope Do America EP). Tarmvred seemed to be on an unstoppable climb to the top of the power noise hill. Then came a kind of cute chip-tune EP in 2003, which was ok but not too impressive, and an even less impressive EP in 2005. And that’s the last anybody has heard of Tarmvred. Maybe he realised that he’d lost his mojo and stopped putting out releases… that could be a good thing, instead of going into a terminal decline . But I still wish I got to hear a second Tarmvred album (that split totally doesn’t count, I don’t care what anyone says).

NCC

This whole category is exemplified by the baffling case of NCC, a name that will forever go down in the annals of industrial folklore. This was a band that nobody had heard of, consisting of two youngsters from New York (who were apparently 19 when they wrote and recorded their debut), who put out one of the most mind-bendingly brilliant albums you’ll ever hear: Seven Steps of Nervousness. While it doesn’t have the best production quality in the world, the songwriting on that album is operating on levels that a lot of bands cannot even perceive, let alone understand or approximate. And Seven Steps is the only thing they ever put out. There is literally no trace of them after that. The only thing I ever heard were some rumors that one of them had decided to dedicate his life to lying in front of Israeli bulldozers in the Occupied Territories. While I feel that insanely talented people don’t have a moral responsibility to do something productive with their abilities and share them with the world, that story makes me angry. I wish I had 1% of the talent those guys had, and they gave the world one album and then disappeared? Screw you, NCC. I hate you. To see what I mean, go listen to this and pick your jaw up off the floor: