As much as it pains me, I decided to censor this album cover because I realized it might not be a good idea to have the original image featured on my social media ( view the uncensored version here ) I thought it might be interesting to review another foreign band this week. You might remember that I reviewed the Russian band, Молчат Дома, last week (be sure to check out that post if you haven't yet). This week, I am reviewing an album by a German band, Einstürzende Neubauten.  Einstürzende Neubauten (translates to "Collapsing New Builds") is a industrial band from West Berlin, formed in 1980. Industrial was really big in Germany, and Einstürzende Neubauten was one of the bands at the front of the scene, even playing concerts with Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle fame at ICA London ( check out my review of Throbbing Gristle - The Second Annual Report here ). Unlike Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten doesn't stick to pure experimentation and noise in their...

From just looking at the cover, this album might not seem like much. I mean, just look at it! It looks like some kind of lazy bootleg, or the cover to some official document. However, despite its looks, this is one of the most important albums ever made. This is because this is the debut album of the first ever industrial band, Throbbing Gristle. Without this album or band, more famous industrial bands and groups such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Marilyn Manson, and Death Grips would never of been created! Old photo in front of TG's lightning bolt logo When you first look at the track list of this album, the first thing you might notice is that there are a lot of repeated songs. In fact, out of the 9 tracks on the album, there are 3 tracks called Slug Bait and 4 called Maggot Death. This is because almost all of these repeated tracks are live recordings from different shows. Despite this, all of the repeated tracks sound ...

        In my recent review of Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction, I mentioned how I was surprised how much I liked that band, despite previously not being a fan of the genre. Well here I am again, and this time I'm even more surprised. A while ago, looking to expand my musical horizons, I talked to some of my friends about wanting to try to find some hip-hop that I liked, and knowing my music taste, one of them recommended that I checked out Death Grips. When I first listened to their most popular album, The Money Store, I was skeptical, but their unique blend of hip-hop, industrial, and noise spoke to me. Over the next few weeks I started listening to their other releases. Now, call me Anthony Fantano because I'm a fan of Death Grips. Now, enough about me, lets talk about the band.         Death Grips is an experimental industrial hip hop band from California, consisting of Zach Hill, Andy ...

        Frances the Mute is the second studio album by American experimental progressive rock band, The Mars Volta. A fun fact about this band: the "Volta" in the band's name comes from a term in a book by Federico Fellini, which he defines to mean "a changing of scene, or a turnaround". The "Mars" part of the name just came from the band's fascination with science fiction. What does these two words mean together? Who knows. The Mars Volta stands out to me as a band due to the unusually loud, chaotic, and powerful nature of their music. Progressive music is often chaotic, but The Mars Volta takes it to a whole new level. You will be listening to one of their songs, and suddenly BAM! Cement truck of guitars and synths to the face! In addition, the amazing and unique vocals of Cedric Bixler-Zavala bring a lot to the band's music. His voice is extremely powerful and is able to quickly and flawlessly switch between standard rock vocals to s...

There are certain genres of music that were never meant to ever be associated with each other, and, without a doubt, black metal and house are two of those. Despite this, The Soft Pink Truth decided to sell their souls to Satan and birth the unholy creation that is Why Do the Heathen Rage? In this album, The Soft Pink Truth (TSPT) covers several black metal classics (and some others) as experimental blackened house songs, and somehow, kind of makes it work (by the way, I added links to the originals where it says "[band] cover" so you can listen to both versions and compare them).         I keep saying "house," but I'm sure most people reading this blog don't know what that is, so here you go. House is a style of 80s techno club music, produced by DJs, which features drum machines, 4/4 beats, and off beat hi-hats; somewhat similar to disco. Despite this, house is much more electronic and minimalist than disco, and often has a mechanical, repetitive ...

Ok, so this is going to be a weird one. Last Sunday, I attended a Crank Sturgeon noise show (basically a concert with experimental bands instead of conventional ones) and decided to put off the other bands on my schedule to review Crank Sturgeon and his show. I was actually lucky to be able to see Crank Sturgeon at this concert because he said it would be his last ever in the East Coast since he is moving to California! A short biography of Crank Sturgeon*: When he was younger, Crank got interested in dada and futurism which according to him "was way cooler than being in a punk band." He also started writing cutup poetry, inspired by these interests. In the late 80s, Crank went to art school where he started doing video art, performance art, and got into multi-media projects. It was also at this time that he started getting into experimental noise music, "I went to art school because I didn’t want to go to music school; I wanted to make noise, but I was a terribl...