It’s that time of the year again. Time for my annual best of list or “highlights” as I prefer to call them. 2019 was a eventful year for alternative music. There was a lot of new material that caught my attention which made selecting a top 10 much more difficult than last year. After much deliberation I have narrowed it down to the following albums:
1. Eluveitie – Antegnatos Genre: Folk Metal 2. Children of Bodom – Hexed
Genre: Melodic Death Metal/ Power Metal 3. The 69 Eyes – West End Genre: Goth n’Roll/ Gothic Rock 4. Mgła – Age of Excuse Genre: Black Metal 5. Combichrist – One Fire Genre: Industrial Metal/Electro-Industrial 6. Hocico – Artificial Extiction Genre: Electro- Industrial/ Aggrotech 7. Blutengel – Un:Gott Genre: Synth-pop/Darkwave 8. Darkthrone – Old Star Genre: Black Metal/Blackened Heavy Metal/Doom Metal 9. Sabaton – The Great War Genre: Power Metal 10. Ad Inferna – Des Diables et Des Dieux Genre: Symphonic Black Metal
Honorable mentions:
Aurelio Voltaire – She’s Glowing
Taken from the album What Are The Oddz?
God Module – Cross My Heart
Taken from the album The Unsound
Scandroid – The Writing’s On The Wall
Taken from the album The Light
The long-awaited new Rammstein album also came out this year. Sadly, despite a having handful of great songs including ‘Deutschland’, it was a little disappointing. I expected more from them after a decade of waiting.
Best live show of 2019
Metallica live in Hämeenlinna
Runners up, honorable mentions go to: Behemoth live in Tampere and Blutengel live at Hellsinki Industrial.
New discoveries for 2019
Raven Said, Priest and Cygnosic
Most anticipated releases for 2020
a new albums from Helloween and Vader
Mono Inc- The Book of Fire
Celldweller – Satellites
Cygnosic, Priest, Blutengel
Nosturi, Helsinki
22-23 November 2019
Helsinki…It’s been a while…The last time I visited the city was for the Memmaker and Zardonic concert back in 2016. Since then I really have not had much time to travel there. I hoped that I would go back someday if there was a reason to go there. Earlier this year the German synth-pop duo Blutengel were announced as the headliner for Hellsinki Industrial Festival. So that was it, my reason to go.
Saturday 23 November 2019
I decided to attend only one day of the festival, Saturday. The venue was Nosturi, which is located by the seaside in the Hietalahti district of Helsinki. I have been there many times before but sadly this festival will be my last time at Nosturi. The venue is due to close by the end of the year and the building will be knocked down to make way for residential premises in 2020.
First up was the Greek dark electro artist Cygnosic. This was one of those cases when it took a live performance for me to notice and really get into a band. I have heard the name Cygnosic before but I never really got round to checking out his music until now. Great show! The music was creepy, atmospheric and very danceable. Just how I like my dark electro. I will definitely check out more of his music.
Next was a Finnish industrial metal band called Fear of Domination – the only metal band in the whole festival line-up. Whilst their show was entertaining to watch, I struggled to get into the music. It sounded like a mish-mash of industrial metal and melodic death metal. They have two vocalists, a man doing the death metal growling and a female singer doing the clean vocals. That worked well enough for most of time but the cacophony of melodeath guitar riffs and the overuse of Pain-esque “disco” synth was a little too much for my liking.
I did like the Swedish synth-pop trio Priest though. The band was formed back in 2017 and the original line-up featured former members of Ghost. There has been some line-up changes since then but the concept remains the same. Three guys known as Sulphur, Salt and the vocalist Mercury came to the stage draped in elaborate gimp-like outfits and masks. Mercury has a multi-faceted and very unique voice. The music was entertaining and fun to dance to. They did a good cover of Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out) at the end.
Then it was time for the headliners Blutengel. This was their first time in Finland. Great show. The front-man Chris may not be that used to speaking to a non-German speaking audience. Sadly the Finnish crowd were not that well versed when it came to singing along to the lyrics of ‘Engelsblut’ but that did not stop them from enjoying the show. I certainly did. It was great to hear some of the Blutengel classics such as ‘Children of The Night’ and ‘Bloody Pleasures’ along with the new hits such as ‘Black’ and ‘Morningstar’.
Overall, I am glad that I decided to travel to Helsinki for Hellsinki Industrial Festival. I finally got to see Blutengel live and I discovered Cygnosic. Priest were pretty good too. It’s a shame that Nosturi will be closing this year. Hopefully they will open a new music venue in Helsinki in the future.
This year saw the return of some of my favorite industrial artists. I also made some new discoveries and I checked out some genres that I would have never thought that I would listen to. So here are my top 10 industrial and other non-metal albums of 2017:
1. Suicide Commando – Forest of the Impaled Genre: Aggrotech/Harsh Industrial/Harsh EBM
2. Grendel – Age of the Disposable Body Genre: Aggrotech/Harsh Industrial
8. Blue Stahli – Anti-Sleep Vol.4 Genre: Electro-rock/ Funk-rock/instrumental
9. Cephalgy – Gott Maschine Vaterland Genre: EBM
10. iVardensphere – Hesitation Genre: Power noise/Tribal Industrial
One album that didn’t make my top 10 was Celldweller’s ‘Offworld’; a good effort but no match for his earlier work. I prefer his heavier, more metal-oriented albums.
Best Live Show
Nachtmahr live at Lumous Gothic Festival
Christmas is over, which means that it’s now time for my annual “Best of” or “Highlights” as I prefer to call them. This year’s edition will be in two parts – only this time I’ve decided to do the Industrial edition first. I struggled to come up with a list of top ten albums, so here are my favourite songs of 2015:
1. Celldweller – New Elysium
Album: End of An Empire
Genre: Industrial Rock, Electro, Drum’n’Bass, Trance, EDM
Celldweller is probably the most diverse artist that you will find in my personal music collection. Since the project’s humble beginnings back in the late 1990s, the multi-instrumentalist Klayton, Celldweller’s sole member, has been experimenting with a vast variety of genres ranging from industrial rock, metal, trance, ambient, EDM and even dub-step. ‘New Elysium’ is taken from his third “vocal” album ‘End of An Empire’ (if you don’t count the movie and video game soundtracks). This song reflects the things that I love about Celldweller – industrial rock and trance have never sounded so good mixed together.
2. Blue Stahli – Down in Flames
Album: The Devil
Genre: Electro Rock
Blue Stahli was introduced to me by the same person who got me into Celldweller. The two artists also happen to be on the same record label, they are friends and they have toured together in the past. Blue Stahli is also a one-man industrial brain child of Bret Autrey. ‘Down in Flames’ has been selected from his second album ‘The Devil’, and it has become one of my favourite songs to play when I’m at the gym. No trance or ambient melodies, just good old “ready or not here comes The Devil” “burn baby burn”! Electro Rock…
‘The Pain That You Like’ may have been this year’s single but ‘My New Christ’ was the track that caught my attention. Profound and complex lyrics to match the dark atmosphere and intensive synth melodies. In short, this song features all the things that make Suicide Commando one of my favourite artists. His new album won’t see the light of day until 2016, but you can get this track and many others by various industrial artists from the Out of Line label’s ‘Electro Storm vol.6’ -compilation CD.
My favourite Mexican Aggrotech duo are back with a new album. It was tough to pick a favorite song from ‘Ofensor’ since I love the whole album. In the end I decided to go with ‘Bienvenido A La Maldad’ due to the vibrant and fantastically choreographed music video. It’s also a great dance tune.
5. Blutengel – Asche Zu Asche
Album: Omen
Genre: Gothic Synth-pop/Darkwave
I have to be honest here… The first time that I came across Blutengel, I couldn’t stop laughing at their ridiculously cheesy vampire video for ‘Reich mir die Hand’. As cheesy as it was, the song did stick in my head and after a few weeks I ended up buying one of their live DVDs followed by most of the discography… Given my general dislike for synth-pop, the chances that if these guys didn’t sing in German about vampires and other Gothic themes, I probably wouldn’t pay any attention to them. ‘Asche Zu Asche’ is my favourite track from the latest album ‘Omen’.
6. Eisbrecher – 1000 Narben
Album: Schock
Genre: Industrial Rock
I’ve been listening to Eisbrecher for a few years now. Earlier this year I finally had the pleasure of seeing these guys live in Helsinki for the first time. It was one hell of a show. They played a lot of the new songs from their latest album ‘Schock’ but ‘1000 Narben’ is the one that I found the most memorable.
There’s not an awful lot of female electronic artists that I regularly listen to. What I was hoping for this year was a new album from the Unter Null. Sadly that was not to be but I discovered that Zombie Girl, an artist who been away from the scene since 2009 had just released a new album. ‘Panic Attack’ was the first single and my favourite track from her latest opus ‘Killer Queen’.
8. Alien Vampires – All Fakes Must Die
Album: Drag You to Hell
Genre: Aggrotech/Electro-Industrial/ Harsh EBM
When it comes to sinister sounding Harsh EBM and risqué imagery based on either drugs, BDSM and infernal blasphemy, nobody does it better than this dark electro duo. “Evil Bloody Music” it sure is and it’s damn catchy as well. The whole album is really good but ‘All Fakes Must Die’ is my personal favourite.
9. Noisuf-X – Big Bang (2015 Demo Version)
Album: 10 Years of Riot
Genre: Power- Noise
Noisuf- X is a relatively new discovery for me. I’ve been a fan of Jan L.’s main project, the wonderfully eerie and atmospheric harsh EBM that is X-Fusion. Noisuf-X is the slightly younger brother; the music tends to be more dance-oriented and club-friendly falling under the category of power-noize. I always dance to it when I hear it at a night club but with this album being a best of, I decided to buy a copy to play at home. ‘Big Bang (2015 Demo Version)’ is one of the new track from the bonus disc.
10. Blutengel & Meinhard – Kinder der Sterne
Album: In alle Ewigkeit (EP) – the Blutengel version
Genre: Gothic Synth-pop/Darkwave
Normally when I prepare these lists for my annual highlights, I try to avoid mentioning the same artist twice. This year I’ve decided to make an exception. ‘Kinder der Sterne’ isn’t just a Blutengel song, it’s a collaboration between them and another German electronic artist, the eccentric and theatrical Meinhard. The song was actually written by Meinhard who then asked Chris Pohl of Blutengel to join him and create this superbly catchy piece of Gothic electro. You can find the Meinhard of this track on his new album ‘ALCHEMUSIC II – coagula’. Personally I prefer the Blutengel version.
Best New Discovery of 2015: My Own Sorrow
Best live show: it’s a tie between Das Ich at Lumous Gothic Festival and Eisbrecher live in Helsinki.
Most Anticipated Albums of 2016
New albums by Suicide Commando, Heimataerde and Unter Null
That’s all for now… Stay tuned for part 2. The Metal edition, coming soon
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