Industrial rock alive and kicking

2010 seems to become a good year for industrial rock (or American coldwave, if you will). Tim Skold is coming back, putting out a new album in his own name "early 2010", with two songs available on iTunes and Nokia Music Store (that I know of) - "A Dark Star" and "Bullets Ricochet" - both of them heavy industrial rockers, showing great promise for the new album (previews can be heard here, there's a preview of a third track, "I Will Not Forget" which apparently was featured on the TV show "FlashForward").

The guys in Society Burning are finally putting out a new album, "Internal Combustion", which according to "word on the information highway" is finished and awaiting some form of distribution. In the meantime, their debut EP "Entropy.Lingua" can be found, in full and remastered here, along with a bunch of other tracks. (Take some time and check out Dave's own page while you're at it, lots of cool artwork and stuff over there.)

Jason Bazinet is due to put out a new SMP album sometime in 2010 as well. For a while it seemed as though he'd put SMP to the grave permanently, after "The Treatment" and its companion remix album, "Pissing on the Legacy". Luckily he changed his mind. Jason also has quite a lot of material available for download over at the [SMPHQ] (under "Media"). Be sure to check out his "For the Fuck Of It" mixtape, awesome stuff delving further into the SMP blend of industrial rock/rap. Those lucky bastards in the US can also catch SMP on tour.

Chemlab is back and kicking in 2010. Jared has been working on both a new album and a retrospective of rare/non-album tracks. Due to unfortunate circumstances, both have been delayed (the retrospective was originally due late last year). Jared is also bringing Chemlab on the road along with 16volt and Left Spine Down for the 2010 Midi Ghetto tour - again, if you're in the US (or Canada) be sure to catch it. The rest of us can only hope some of these guys can make it over the Atlantic. More information can be found at the Chemlab MySpace blog.

And speaking of 16volt they put out a truly stunning album last year - "AmericanPornSongs", which incidentally featured Jeremy Inkel (of Left Spine Down), Jason Bazinet and Tim Skold - and have made almost their entire back catalogue available for free download over at 16volt.com.

Moving on, Left Spine Down recently put out "Smartbomb 2.3: The Underground Mixes Double-Album" which I haven't gotten yet, but soon will. (For some reason, only disc 2 is available on the Nokia Music Store.)

There's also been rumours of a new Sulpher album, following up their brilliant 2002 debut "Spray". Normally I would be doubtful, but seeing as how Sunna managed to finally put out a new album last year, after their 2000 debut "One Minute Science" I'm prepared to keep my hopes up. It doesn't hurt that the Sunna album ("Two Minute Terror", available for purchase at Sunnamusic.co.uk) was one of the best albums of 2009. I also just noticed that Jon is working on a third Sunna album at the moment, which is the best news of today so far.

Following 2009 seemed a tough job at first, with great releases from KMFDM ("Blitz"), the self-titled Skold vs. KMFDM collaboration, Bile ("Hate Radio"), Mob Research ("Holy City Zoo"), the aforementioned 16volt ("AmericanPornSongs") and Sunna ("Two Minute Terror") among others. But looking at what's ahead, it seems those of us into this kind of music are in for a treat.

A final reflection - there's a lot of great industrial rock bands starting with "S". What's up with that? And when do we get a proper tour over in Europe guys? I can even go so far as to settle for a few UK gigs...