Yet another pop act succumbing to the temptation of turning their hit into a “speedy-version” to please the teeny bopper crowd.
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NIN’s “Lights in the Sky” tour a few years ago was astounding – both abrasive and beautiful, since they went back and forth between the loudest and quietest parts of their catalog (a string ensemble playing parts of Ghosts). Not ‘pop’ at all.
The opening act was HEALTH, who at the time were very TG/Coil esque.
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Test Dept, Rhythm & Noise, Z’Ev, early Einstuerzende Neubauten, Lustmord - none of that stuff sounds like pop to me.
Madness does, but they’re supposed to (and their early work still kicks ass).
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I feel the same thing with metal and pretty much everything “hard”- it doesn’t matter how edgy your sound is or how extreme your scene is, if it’s got enough of a hook for it to stick in your head, congratulations! You’ve created a pop song.
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Me too.
I never really liked 80’s “industrial” dance music, so when NIN came along I was unimpressed. I always thought Reznor sounded fake, his pain a pretentious act-- Sleepy John Estes sounds more anguished than him, and TG had an aura of genuine fear and creepiness in their sound and image.
I can give Trent Reznor some credit for slicking up that 80’s Wax Trax sound and making pop hits from it, but just from a songwriting perspective ABBA blows him away.
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Finally; my kind of thread!
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Except no it sucks
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From the only Neubauten Album I’ll ever need:
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Damn I used to have that record it folded out into a crucifix of melted army men toys fucking bril
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You know that you’re getting old when you hear the songs that you loved in high school…
…played on violins in your dentist’s office.
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Another one that can never lose its edge because it is edge:
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30 years ago I used to burst into laughter at my prim & proper Aunt’s house when I heard versions of Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train and Lipps, Inc. (and others) - Funkytown, play on the muzak station she keeps on!
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If there was ever a candidate for an extended version, it would be this amazing, all-too-brief track:
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Pretty Hate Machine is still one of the best things to come out of the 90’s. It was never raw edge of say Skinny Puppy or Ministry or Front 242 but it’s got roots in 80’s synth pop. There’s not much else from NIN that compares to the album IMO. Some of Downward Spiral.
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I loved Pretty Hate machine specifically because it’s more in line with the synth pop sound of the 80’s makes me think of Depeche Mode or Pet shop boys with more darkness and more energy. When it comes to the rest of his catalog? I’d rather go listen to Pig Face or Skinny Puppy or Front 242 or FLA or any other industrial band.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s I could always count on 4AD bands to deliver music that was ethereal and beautiful in it’s own special way. Catchy but not the typical pop structure.
I loved Depeche Mode and Pet shop boys prior to Pretty Hate Machine so I’m not sure why the album rubbed me wrong at the time of release. For me it was the Downward Spiral that made me a fan.
These were my staple diet for many years. SP was my absolute favorite band for many years and I was lucky to see them live on multiple occasions. I found Pig Face to be a bit hit and miss but one of my favorite moments on their first tour was a song that starred with one person on stage. Gradually people joined him one by one. A sound engineer was at the back of the room sampling them live and then remixing them over the top of the live performance. Then people started to quietly leave the stage until the stage was empty and the sound engineer continued the song for another few minutes. You could see the crowd collectively realize the music was no longer coming from the stage until the entire room had turned around to the sound board to cheer him on. It was nicely unexpected.
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It all makes sense to me now.
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I had a similar reaction the first time I heard “Royals” by Lorde. “This sounds like an unreleased Nurse With Wound rhythm track,” said I to myself. “Who knew pop would someday sound like industrial?”
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In this thread: complaining that popular “alternative” music sounds like popular “mainstream” music. The commonality is that, to be popular, they degrade to the lowest common denominator.
The only real industrial mentioned in this thread is Einstürzende Neubauten and even in “Sabrina” they manage to be more punk than NIN ever has been.
Where the hell y’all at on Crass, Rancid, Gorilla Biscuits, Peter and the Test Tube Babies, Das Ich, Funker Voigt, Fear Factory, etc?
GOSH! Geb’ mir mein Destillat already.
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Can I add Missing Foundation to the party?
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