Here's a very obscure industrial metal album made in Canada, released about the same time as "Phobos" by Voivod and "Demanufacture" by Fear Factory, to which it's often compared. It does sound very similar to "Demanufacture", althought Virus aren't as heavy as Fear Factory, so I can understand why people in Youtube comments compare them to Pitchshifter instead.
The songs on their one and only album, "Bio Level 4", while being somewhat monotonous and unmemorable, shouldn't disappoint anyone who's searching for something what sounds alike mid-90s Fear Factory, with the same "technological"/dystopian aesthetics. The riffs on "Bio Level 4" are as "mechanical" as they could be (although no one can beat Meshuggah on that). Along with Flash Terrorist, Virus were one of that mid-90s Fear Factory followers who released only one album and then disappeared - which is a pity because their material, while being not perfect, was clearly showing a lot of potential.
Here's another Voivod album I'd like to mention here. I've never seen it mentioned as "Voivod's best" (unlike any of their late 80s' albums), but it's certainly one of their most experimental ones, and arguably the only one that can be called "industrial metal" without a stretch. Surely, it isn't much different from most other Voivod albums in the terms of lyrics and aesthmetics (as they always were fascinated with sci-fi themes, technology, and social issues), but it's noticeably different from the aforementioned "best" albums in terms of sound. "Phobos" isn't the kind of album I'd listen to every day (in fact, all Voivod albums aren't), but it definitely worth checking out for both prog metal and industrial metal fans. Of course it isn't hard to find on the net (i.e. on dark-world.ru)
Since Voivod were mentioned in my previous entry, I decided to post their debut full-length release from the era when their sound wasn't too "progressive" yet. This album is raw thrash metal with a healthy dose of punk, apparently inspired by bands like Venom and Warfare. I'm pretty sure it already was reviewed numerous times, so I have to say only one thing: while I normally don't listen to this kind of music too much, the aesthetics on this album are 10 out of 10. If you're looking for a thrash metal album with post-apocalyptic/post-nuclear theme, this one would be exactly what you're looking for (along with "Pray For War" by Virus).
What else is interesting about this album? The lyrics. They look like being written by someone who had even worse proficiency in English than me, which resulted in quite a few truly brilliant lines like "Go shit! I'm not a fish we're gonna burn your home". At times, it feels like they just wanted to write down all the scary words they know, but the result turned out to be surprisingly impressive:
"Riding, crashing, charging run to the wrong side
In the night bastard, savage, prowler
Whip the engine for more power fast winds, highway, hell song
Feel the fog in the black storm
Darkness, black walls, shadows can't see the light on the road
Alone in a haunted concrete foundation
Abandoned and possessed in a ghostly mansion
Desert, ghost town, bare lands dark street create a fear
Closed lamps, curfews dead leaves
The black cat awaits the witch
Don't stay in black city your soul will catch the spell"
Or this one, which probably was supposed to be sci-fi themed (like many other Voivod songs written later):
"Learning the rules of the games with atrocity
Living in a prehistoric weather with intensity
Armed cold weapons in hand charged mangled corpse on the land
The bestial contortions on the prey makes me lust to kill 'em all everyday
Curdled by frost too young to rust fight be wild
Warriors of ice the hell fighters
Warriors of ice"
That's what is remarkable about this album - back them, Voivod were absolute beginners when it comes to writing both music and lyrics, but the end result turned out to be surprisingly better than could be expected. On their later releases, they continued to break the rules of songwriting (this time intentionally), thus becoming one of most unorthodox metal bands of their time.
This EP is certainly one of the strangest releases I've discovered via Vibrations of Doom about a decade ago. Something that can be loosely described as a mix of Rush and Black Sabbath at one hand, and early Voivod and Watchtower at another, with a rather rough quality of production (but what else to expect from an obscure 80's metal release with such a cover artwork?..) I managed to find a more or less detailed review of it here, and a short biography of the band here, but not much beyond that. Anyway, if you liked this release and want more from the same people, check out "Into the Unknown" by Doctor Smith - a "sci-fi space opera" made in early 2010s by former Spectral Incursion members.
高円寺百景 aka Koenji Hyakkei were one of the few bands that can be safely called the worthy successors of Magma. The Zeuhl subgenre of avant-prog, started by Magma, gained any significant following only in France and Japan, most importantly such bands as Ruins and this band (which was started as a side project of a member of Ruins).
This album has everything we love this genre for, including (but not limited to): throbbing bass, complex rhythm patterns, and the lyrics sung in a made-up language. This album is their debut one, and it isn't as avant-garde as the subsequent ones, such as "Angherr Shisspa". Still I wonder how many people have bought it solely because of it's cover, expecting it to be some nice and easy-to-listen Asian music :)
All I know about this band is that they were an instrumental avant-garde rock trio from Pushkin (which is in the vicinity of St.Petersburg). This album was recorded during March-April 1990 with the help of Yuri Morozov as sound engineer, and was released on vinyl by Andrei Tropillo's label AnTrop, when the band already has split up.
Although it was produced by such famous (at the time) people in the Russian rock scene, it failed to get much publicity, mostly because the music was too unaccessible for an average listener. There were very few Soviet rock bands whise music could be called "avant-prog", and Sepsis definitely were one of them. The album is titled "Liturgy of Madness", which is a pretty appropriate name for a piece of such scary music (maybe not on pair with the best works of Goblin, Univers Zero and Shub-Niggurath, but still). The only known mp3 rip of it consists of two long tracks corresponding to the A and B sides of the original release:
A very strange album released on Random Radar Records (which, if I'm not mistaken, was a precursor to Cuneiform Records, which every avant-prog & RIO fan knows about). Some backstory on it can be found here. The author compares Mars Everywhere to Gong and Hawkwind on one side, and to Tangerine Dream or Conrad Schnitzler (and the Berlin school of electronic music in general) on the other. As for me, it sounds suprisingly alike some Yuri Morozov's early electronic works, especially considering that he was using pretty much the same sort of sci-fi/dystopian aesthetics.
It's certainly not for everyone's liking, but if you like both the avant-garde prog rock of the late 70s and early 80s, and the early industrial scene of the same time, give it a listen. Found it at the Ezhevika Fields blog (which has nothing to do with Ezhevika the lead vocalist of Oyme, yet it's still great):
This is my favourite album in the whole Aaron Funk's large discography, and not only because it features a very interesting and unique mix of breakcore and classical music (see Wikipedia to find out what pieces of classical music were used on there). Most important of all, it's based on the urban legend of the "Hungarian suicide song" ("Szomorú Vasárnap" by Rezső Seress), which greatly impressed me at the time and became one of the most important reasons for me to became interested in the culture of Finno-Ugric peoples. As for Funk, he became interested in this story when he was on his European tour, after imagining himself turning into a pigeon on Budapest's Royal Palace, and he decided to record this album when he came back home to his cats in Winnipeg:
An extremely detailed musicological analysis of "Rossz Csillag Alatt Született" can be found here. Too technical for you? Check out this review then. It's a very interesting read (probably much better than anything that I could ever write on this subject), and I can relate to its author's feelings very well. Just like him, I have never self-harmed and have never attempted suicide, yet I'm diagnosed with depression (F32.1), and the late 2016-early 2017 period was especially horrible for me (thankfully it slowly gets better now).
From Bandcamp: "A very unique collection of songs and different sub-genres that have
been fused into something very Industrial, but so new and interesting". A very accurate description of this album, which contains 6 tracks recorded by Access To Arasaka & collaborators around 2012, with alternative versions of each track as a bonus. The whole thing sounds quite different from ATA's solo works, mainly because these tracks are songs rather than soundscapes. Unfortunately, Rob Lioy, the man behind the ATA moniker, is too busy with his family life now to record any new music (at least that's what I've heard), which is a pity because his albums are one of the best examples of the cyberpunk-themed music.
"As early as in the year of 2012 electronic solo artists Access To
Arasaka, Erode and Dirk Geiger started reflecting about combining their
powers and working like a real band. Their main objective was to write
more song-orientated music instead of flowing soundscapes. After months
of fruitful collaboration, they held three songs in their hands and felt
very happy about the outcome. In quick succession another three
promising tracks were finished.
Already during these sessions the idea of engaging other artists for
alternative versions of these songs came up. Only artists that were
influential and inspirational to the three actors were chosen. The good
news is that all of the favored few were on board and did striking
versions of said songs.
When everything was recorded and ready for mixing (mixing-session was
scheduled literally for the next day!), Erode´s car was broken into and
all harddrives plus backup hard drives were gone...
With nothing left and with a heavy heart the three decided to put the
project to sleep. Frustrated but grateful for the experiences and the
new made friends everybody went back to his business.
In 2016 Erode discovered some old backups in his studio and found fragments of Reports from the Abyss. First there were
just some unorganized tracks, but step by step more and more material
was brought to light. Within a few months they managed recovering all
files. So Erode and Dirk Geiger plucked up courage to walk the extra
mile and put everything together for a second time..."
One member of TTMTDis from Volgograd and another one is from Novosibirsk, and this duo is considered to be one of the most interesting new projects on the Russian (post-)industrial scene. The "Inside the Monolith" EP is an attempt in creating futuristic/cyberpunk-themed music mostly inspired by the OSTs by Trent Reznor ("The Girl With Dragon Tattoo" and "Gone Girl), using FL Studio 4:
