I always liked how Consolidated blended genres and tackled politics when many other bands avvoided being too political.
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I bet that was good. I saw them on the Spectre tour, and there was maybe 50 people there… it was my daughter’s first small club show and we got right up to the front of the stage for it.
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Big Black retains some of its intensity.
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Came here for this.
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I think audiences in general ignore a lot of the political messages. Though maybe industrial fans are especially dense.
I’ve seen MAGA waving fans on FB chastise KMFDM for political posts, and I am like, “What part of ‘Rip the System’ were you confused about?”
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A band like Laibach can be especially hard to parse, politically though. I mean, Rip the System is a pretty straight forward message… but Tanz Mit Laibach?
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That’s the song everybody was waiting for. Irving Plaza went nuts when it started.
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I remember a group named Left Hand Right Hand coming to Austin (when I lived there), and whoever organized the concert called around town borrowing various drums for them. (Good gracious that was almost 26 years ago)
IIRC, back in the '80s New Model Army couldn’t get work visas because the US felt they hadn’t done “significant work” or some such. They put on a concert in the UK, told everyone in the audience to fuck off, got written up in the newspapers and voila! they were significant and got their visas.
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Yeah, same at the show I was at… people kept yelling for it, and they finally played it at the end.
The rest of the set was great, though. They played stuff off Spectre, some more obscure stuff… no one spoke between songs, either, they had a digital voice interacting with the crowd.
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But that was just matching up with one song, and it’s not like… oh, er…
When NIN (and Ministry, etc.) became part of the industrial scene, there was a reason industrial started getting called “death disco.” The crossover had already happened - they were pop bands from the start; it just took the rest of pop a while to fully catch up.
When they start doing the children’s chorus/tonally transformed cover versions for movie trailers, that’s when the time has really come… which I guess, in the case of Christian Death, would be some sort of chirpy pop version. Any day now.
Who did some lovely NIN remixes (oooh, full circle!), de-popping the music.
(I’m now trying to imagine some poppified versions of TG or Coil, and failing. I don’t see how We Hate You (Little Girls) or How to Destroy Angels could possibly get transformed into pop versions, somehow. Maybe a few of Coil’s later songs…)
Oh crap, I haven’t seen Laibach since '96 or '97, when they were touring after releasing “Jesus Christ Superstars” They played a little local club, the crowd was small, but they were trying to do almost a stadium-style show, because they were clearly used to playing bigger venues. It was weird.
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It wasn’t until much later that I realized 1/2 Mensch had Depeche Mode’s producer (Gareth Jones). He also produced Wire’s The Ideal Copy which was my gateway to that band.
I used to put on Filth (or Killing Joke’s What’s THIS For!) when I wanted to clear my dorm room of visitors (they weren’t my visitors and I guess I was too cowardly to just get to the point and say “get the hell out of my room, now”). (It didn’t work.)
I also thought it was fun to point people to this Pat Metheny album:
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I can’t imagine ever feeling … complacent… to Hamburger Lady.
/still my creepiest song ever
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Oh, also:
I realized that when neither singer was on screen, I wasn’t always sure whose music video footage I was seeing, because the old NIN footage was perfectly at home in a new Swift video.
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I did not know that but am not too surprised actually.
I don’t know the discography of Throbbing Gristle as well as I should. Just gave Hamburger Lady a listen. I found it soothing.
–
Digging through the memories for bands I haven’t thought of in some time.
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on the other hand, john lydon got real with pil. especially with “metal box” and “flowers of romance”.
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I made it 53 seconds into it and still creeps me out 
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I drew the same conclusions as you and Jason at the turn of this century and I blame a lot on the album production (in particular the mastering). “Head Like A Hole” or “Terrible Lie” sounded a lot less poppy when I saw NIN live!
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He was still in it for the money. They were a talented group of kids just I find it funny that one of the most known punk bands was totally a manufactured band.
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Damn. That’s on the level of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music for room clearing.
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have you ever listened to “flower of romance”? that has to be one of the least commercial albums ever released by a major label.
