If the Terminator decided to give up killing things and made records instead, Dismantled’s first album would’ve been the result. In all my years of listening to hardcore electro, industrial, and terror EBM, nothing has quite captured that same mechanised post-apocalyptic feel; sure Xentrifuge sound like the cybernetic apocalypse, but that’s the actual war against the machines. Xentrifuge’s pure, uncompromising electronic hatred sounds more like the Judgement Day war than the sound track to humanity being rounded up and exterminated in a scorched-sky, blackened post apocalyptic world, and that’s the image I get from Dismantled’s first album.
It’s been a while since I’ve bought anything from electro-goth duo Collide; I’ve mostly bought the newer ones and always keep going back to 1996’s ‘Beneath the Skin’ album as it had a certain industrial rawness to it that the more refined follow ups were missing. They were good albums, no doubt, but it’s always been the older sound that I’ve been into when it comes to Collide, until now at least.
I was very kindly given tickets to see Silver Mt Zion (or Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra La La Band with Choir to give them their full name) for my birthday on Monday. I’ve seen them before and it was one of the most inspirational gigs I’ve ever seen at my local venue; somehow they crammed nine people onto the stage complete with cellos, violins, guitars, percussion and drums. But they didn’t play this.
It’s been such a busy week that I’ve barely had time to blog normally, let alone keep up with my Track of the Morning posts. Not just that, but nothing’s really grabbed me that much this week, or at least nothing I can really talk about on here. Today that’s changed though; it’s all about Let ‘em Hang by Broken Note.
The second song from the UK dubstep/ darkstep DJs new album ‘Terminal Static’, Let ‘em Hang opens with an ominous ambient drone and then introduces some IDM style glitches while delivering some political/ financial rhetoric. And then the bass kicks in.
Yesterday was a sad day; lots of things broke, fell apart and of course JD Salinger passed away. Not to minimise this sad event, but I also had to put my beloved charcoal Cure tour T-shirt out to pasture. I’ve slept in that thing most nights since I bought it at their 2002 Hyde Park concert; it’s seen me through an engagement, several relationships and a couple of different beds and homes, but sadly it’s had enough. The holes in it are too big to ignore now and I just don’t want to sleep in it anymore in case it properly falls apart.
Today’s Track of the Morning is one of my favourites and something that gets played a lot on my iPod; Horror Show by the Birthday Massacre.
TBM are an excellent band, combining goth, synthpop and metal but with the kind of sense of humour that means it comes together without being too depressing. In fact, much of their material is quite fun, but it’s the Tim Burton kind of fun, ie dark. Horror Show is the perfect example of their material, with heavy guitars, catchy synth lines, a danceable beat and Chibi’s amazing voice. It has a habit of going down a storm whenever I play it at clubs too.
Followers of my Twitter page (@CaffeineOD) will know that one of my favourite things in the world at the moment is doom. This is because I’m pretty much constantly caffeinated, stressed and angry with at least one person at any moment of the day; but what put the word ‘doom’ in my head as opposed to one of the other myriad of words in the English language? Today’s Track of the Morning.
It’s not so much a track as a little song that was featured in the pilot episode of tragically cancelled cartoon Invader Zim, sung by Zim’s intellectually challenged robot henchman Gir. It’s hilarious, catchy, and is in danger of being the only thing I’ve ever considered ‘cute’ in my entire life.
I realised that this morning – this year, it will be twenty years since the greatest band of all time released an official studio album. That’s right, break out the smoke machines, strobe lights and all the other goth party products, this year, the Sisters of Mercy’s last album Vision Thing will be twenty.
No, you don’t need to clean your contact lenses – I really did just say that. That’s the great thing about my Track of the Morning (#TOTM) section: it’s not about what’s cool (though, admittedly, my taste is cooler than the Fonz swimming in ice cream at the North Pole), it’s about what’s stuck in my head and today, that’s Kesha.
I went out to a rock night at my local which is organised and DJ’d by one of the guys who DJ’s the club nights I help run, and he very kindly played this track for me. All told, Ministry were always one of those bands that I felt could have been a thousand times better than they were; they did some incredible songs and performances, but they were so inconsistent it actually caused me pain.