If there is any band that can make a song to woo Elvira (Mistress of the Dark) that band would be Ghoultown. This campy video mesh’s Ghoultown’s hellbilly sound with Elvira’s spooktacular (and boob-a-licious) world to create an amazing video. The song is featured on Elvira’s Gravest Hits, a collection of Elvira’s TV and movie themes that can be downloaded off iTunes. Seeing as I’m a huge Ghoultown fan, I throughly enjoy watching these dark cowboys of the night crawl out of that vintage TV set into Elvira’s living room. A gal can only sigh in jealousy, as I wouldn’t mind having Count Lyle (singer) serenade me with his smooth voice, fist pumping action, and handsome physic. I’m in love with Ghoultown first and Elvira second!
release date : August 10, 2010 released by : self release info : 17 tracks . www.mkio.com genre : industrial rock/electro industrial reviewed by : Mike Kieffer
Mankind Is Obsolete is one of my favorite industrial rock bands and I was quite nervous when I found this remix album was getting released. I don’t want to hear the organic drums replaced with a crappy 4-4 club beat, or tight guitar riffs being hacked to bits and re-looped with bad cuts. As you can tell I have been disappointed in previous attempts by other bands. So will MKIO be successful in pleasing me? Well let’s start from the beginning, Manic Recession is a 17 track remix album of the 2007 release Trapped Inside in which 9 of the 11 original tracks get treatment and there is also one original song and a cover song. Starting things off is a remix of “Awake” by Mindcube, it is an average attempt that has hints of DnB but really I was just waiting for it to drop hard DJ Hidden style and it didn’t. The second track “Silent Killer” by Steven Rober Meyers Jr. pulled me back on board. This is a solid remix turning the track into a somewhat dance floor friendly or at least provides a beat for the DJ to mix in and out of. One of my favorite tracks was “Troubled Dreams” remixed by The Lunarium, which pretty much abandons the original except for the vocals, and even then they digitalized Natasha Cox’s voice and clipped and chopped it up and added tones of echo.
Overall I found some of the remixes to be good, some ok, and some bad. I still suggest picking this up if you are a fan, but if you are just going to jump into MKIO for the first time get the real album, it is way better and really is that a bad thing?
recommended tracks : Troubled Dreams (Remixed by The Lunarium, Outland 1101 Mix) overall 6 . music 6 . lyrics 9 . recording quality 6
Catch Mankind Is Obsolete on tour in the US starting August 12th with Android Lust.
One of our favorite albums this year has been Veil Veil Vannish’s Change The Neon Light. Excitement buzzed around the Auxiliary crew when we found out that they released a video for “Anthem for a Doomed Youth”. A solid song and a great representation of the experience of the album, coincidently it is also their single. Before watching this video I had a limited idea of what the band looked like and for some reason I always pictured the lead singer Keven Tecon as a blonde haired surfer kind of guy, thankfully I was wrong. Anyways the video doesn’t offer much else besides checking out the bands style and I am OK with it.
Bill Leeb has been in the electronic music scene since 1985, when he started out with fellow Vancouver boys in Skinny Puppy. Following a need to find his own personal voice he set out on his own and produced music under the name Front Line Assembly, creating a massive body of music from 1987 to now. This eventually wasn’t enough to contain his creative juices and his musical catalog now also includes projects like Delerium, Noise Unit, Intermix, Equinox, and various FLA remix credits.
Front Line Assembly’s newest album, Improvised Electronic Device, came out on June 22. Leeb was kind enough to answer my questions and shed some light on some things I’ve always wondered.
interview by Aaron Andrews
How long did you work on your new album, IED?
This album took the longest out of any Front Line album ever. It almost took three years to make it. In the first year we took about six months writing a bunch of the songs then we decided we’d just walk away for a couple months. We’d never done that before, you know see if you still liked the record. Also all four members were inputting equally, where as before it was just me and Rhys or me and Chris. So it’s kind of a whole new way of doing it like a band almost, which was kind of interesting. In the end we got what we wanted to get. I think we’re all happy with the outcome.
Who else was involved in the making of this album?
Me, Chris Peterson, Jeremy Inkel, and Jared Slingerland. Since we’re on the subject, usually we use Greg Reely to mix the albums but this time we used Greg and Ken (Hiwatt) Marshall, who does all the Skinny Puppy stuff. So this is the first time we’ve used two engineers/mixers. We also have another guitarist on some of the tracks, Justin from a band called Three Inches of Blood. We also did a track with Al Jourgensen of Ministry. We really went around and used a whole bunch of people, I guess after making so many records it got to me. It’s fun to get other people involved and see where we can go with this kind of music. Just see if we can find new ways to turn stones over and stuff.
This album, IED, and the last one, Artificial Soldier, were made with more cast members than most of the previous FLA catalog. Was this intentional or did it just fill out that way?
Well, the thing is because we have a revolving door with Front Line, people sort of come and go, I never say never on anything. So on Artificial it was kind of Rhys had minimal participation on four tracks, he hasn’t toured with us in years and years. So these four guys I just mentioned we played over a hundred shows in a couple years and we formed a good unity. So when it came to working on our next album they wanted to be really involved. I found that the only complaint was there were too many people trying to steer the helm. With Rhys in the old days, and Jeremy and Jared are both 25, you know their pretty young, so it became a bit of a cluster… bomb. You know with everyone trying to get their ideas in.
But on this one there’s no Rhys at all and we’re just forging that idea from Artificial Soldier, it just made for a smoother transition and even though there was more input from everybody it still had more of a calming integral feel from everybody in the band.
Ellen Allien, owner of the label BPitch Control and fairy queen of Berlin’s rave music scene takes a different approach to techno music by releasing albums that are made to stand the test of time, each the condensed result of a completely different creative phase. Her newest album, Dust, follows with this tradition and is about the balance between nocturnal excesses and the packed diary of a Berlin lady who is manager of one of the world’s most illustrious electronic record labels, a fashion designer, producer, and DJ.
What is the concept behind your new album Dust?
Ellen Allien : Dust tells about my life, about both my day and night life. There are songs that talk about falling down and coming up again, “Sun the Rain”, or about how I feel after a long night on the way to the next gig, “You”, or about how I get to know someone special looking through the flashing disco lights at Panorama Bar, “Flashy Flashy”.
It’s been two years since your previous album Sool, I sense a change of direction, what would you say are the main differences between Sool and Dust? What influences have caused these differences?
EA : I produced Sool together with AGF and the main idea was to make it sound minimal. Whereas Dust has been produced together with Tobias Freund. We tried to find the right classical instruments in order to make it sound more homogeneous. The guitars are by Tom Krimi, the clarinet by Andreas Ernst, and percussions by Miguel Toro. The voice is mine and I wanted to make it sound very bright and clear.
Klonavenus is self distributing their new single The Loser and with only an EP out before this, it doesn’t shame me that I know absolutely nothing about the band. What I do know is that this song has infected me and I find myself randomly humming the melody and belting out the lyrics, (usually directed at someone). The video for “The Loser” is not all flashy and over produced, it is low budget. You could say that it is a through back to the early EBM videos of the 80s/90s. Call it what you will but I like it.
I must say I am in love with the new Shiv-r album Hold My Hand. The album itself reminds me of the early Combichrist before they started to write music for their stage show. The video for “The End” is dark and well produced, giving the band a visual presence that helps push them past fellow bands in their genre. Take a peek at the video and enjoy the makeover. ;)
release date : June 22, 2010 released by : Metropolis info : 6 tracks . akisscouldbedeadly.com genre : fusion, punk, new wave, electro reviewed by : Mike Kieffer
Two years ago A Kiss Could Be Deadly released their self-titled debut album an upbeat fusion of punk, electro, and new wave with a female singer, it was a recipe that dared me not to love it. Fast forward two years and their name pops back onto my radar with a six song EP with two original tracks, a cover, and three remixes, titled Farwell. The original songs “I’ll Be Your Anti-Hero, Baby” and “Only In Darkness” are more punk in flavor then the 2006 release. The two songs are both good, full of great hooks, and really make me wish there was more. The three remixes of “Acoustic Romance”, “Damage Control”, and “I Guess You Didn’t Mean It” are all strong as well and make you immediately dig through your old files (or CDs) and find the original release.
Inside the booklet you will find, what I will assume, a sign that there will be no more material from them. Underneath the copyright 2010 hidden into the background of the artwork is the phrase, “it is finished.” The band lineup is listed as “is/was”. The title of the album is Farwell.This all points to the fact that the band did break up in the end of 2008 and they are now in separate bands.
I hope I am wrong and some resurgence of popularity will pull them back together… like Futurarama (new series starts June 24th).
recommended tracks : all of them if you like you may like : The Birthday Massacre, Helalyn Flowers overall 8 . music 7 . lyrics 8 . recording quality 7
