the Top 10 Industrial Albums of 2023

Is there a more fitting soundtrack to watching the world unravel into a dystopian nightmare than Industrial? You would think fans of the genre would be celebrating this but from what I have seen online they are crying under the covers like the rest of the sheeple. If you are someone who believes that leaning into the end should be celebrated since it is a natural destination in the cycle then you might appreciate the mood these albums created as much as I did.  After I sort through the top 10 albums of all the respective genres, I use those lists to compile the top 10 albums of the year. 2023. The very fact these bands made it on the list speaks to how great these albums are, so it's not a slight that the number 8 album is above the 9th album, there is something that just gives it an edge that makes me want to listen to it more. After all, we can try to look cool and pick the hippest bands for a list, but at the end of the day what makes an album the best is that it makes you want more, you look forward to listening to it again. Perhaps you can find your next favorite on this list; and have included links to reviews of these albums if you want to check out the audio on these guys. Anyway here are the top 10 Industrial albums of 2023.

10-Dope -" Blood Money Part Zer0" 

This industrial new metal hybrid proves that if you stick to what you do, you can ride the sound until it comes full circle and becomes cool again. They certainly care about writing songs, their motivation could be questioned in their early days, but to have stayed at it for so long certainly says something, and the experience gained on the way pays off on this album. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/02/dope-blood-money-part-zer0.html

 9-Leather Strip - "Last Station" 

When it comes to discerning the quality of this album, it is going to really depend on what you want from the veteran Danish project. Do you need them to be industrial or just dark electronic music? The lines here begin to get blurry. Aggression is what separates industrial music from electronic music, along with more organic qualities like guitars.  Many industrial projects have beefy enough synths to make guitars not mandatory.  This album starts with a more cold-wave feel and gradually finds more aggressive elements beginning to add up with the deliberate vocal melodies as what earns its spot here.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/12/leaether-strip-last-station.html

 

8- 8 Hour Animal - "Kill Your Boss" 

This New York-based project works off noisy chaos, but so did Skinny Puppy. They earned their place here, by creating something that is both abrasive and unique. There can be uniformity even in the wall of chaos, but I think they took more chances than the previous two bands. 

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/12/8-hour-animal-kill-your-boss.html

7- Psyclon Nine -"More to Hell" 

This album is the companion piece to the previous album "Less to Heaven". It features new songs and remixes. Intact is the droning crunch that carries the brand of industrial this project is known for with the screeching scream of Nero taking a chanted feel. Not new ground, but effective and true to what you would expect from these guys.  It feels like each song is taking you deeper into a hyperrealistic hellscape. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/10/gothtober-psyclon-nine-more-to-hell.html

 

6 -Odonis Odonis -"ICON" 

The Canadian duo's newest effort is a collaborative EP with some pretty note-worthy artists, such as  A Place to Bury Strangers. Terror Bird and Actors also lend their creative juices to this concoction. Patriarchy also steams things up a bit . This album grows on you as it is an odd piece of art, but it is clear these guys are doing something really well and engaging me with the songs. There is a greater sense of adventure than the four previous albums on this list. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/08/odonis-odonis-icon.html

5- Godflesh - "Purge" 

Godflesh has released really dense and dark albums and continues to measure up against the current state of heavy music. This time around there is the embrace of their 90s past, with an almost old-school hip-hop beat kicking off the opening track. They drone on the grooves while barking out the lyrics with chanted authority. Many of these songs could pass for unreleased tracks from "Selfless". Justin plays it pretty safe, as he stays within the bounds of what you expect from these guys.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/06/godflesh-purge.html

 4- Jaaw - "Supercluster" 

Andy Cairns from Therapy? was around when industrial music hit big. He knows it was punks trying to play electronic music. Sure they have taken influence from that era, but this is sludged-out rock with punk attitude. Not far removed from Therapy?'s heavier moments, these guys hit you with fuzzed-out guitars and sullen vocals. Sometimes he  yells more than others and is driven by big punk energy.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/03/jaaw-supercluster.html

  3- Bestial Mouths - "R.O.T.T" 

 The evolution continues. The emphasis of this industrial project's new album is placed on more organic synth grooves. Lynette is singing in a less dramatic and abrasive manner, not too far removed from Zola Jesus' zip code. This album holds up against their body of work and might even be better when it comes to songwriting. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/08/bestial-mouths-rott.html

2- 3TEETH - "EndEx" 

Given the current state of the world, The Los Angeles-based band has been very consistent and this album builds off that base with no really wild turns stylistically as the industrial strength grooves are pumping the lifeblood of their sound to these songs. The dystopian vibes are sometimes hammered at you with the chugged weight of Meshuggah, as they blend nu-metal with metal core in terms of aggression, while later in the album touching on an almost Pink Floyd-like melody. , 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/09/3teeth-endex.html

 1- HEALTH- RAT WARS 

 This band continues to perfect its unique place in industrial music that is both apocalyptic and an androgynous self-loathing. Their heaviest work to date, also finds their arrangements droning on the groove less and letting them spawn into new landscapes.

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2023/12/health-rat-wars.html

Psyclon Nine : "Less to Heaven:

The 7th album from the dark industrial projects, continues down a similar path though the focus this time around leans more toward gritty electronic beats and the darker vocals seething from the shadows rather than the almost black metal screeching we have heard from them on some of their past releases. The opening track is more of an intro and things get darker and sonically heavier after it. "the Poison Will Deaden the Pain" is a harrowing bleak sound, but not as focused of a song. The beat that sets the stage for "Off With Their Heads" lends itself to the groove of song writing, even if said groove is a sultry march into the underworld. The now we do what they told us, kind of plays off the Rage Against the Machine theme, but with a more shadow drenched sneer skeptical of what any opposition does, yet the spirt of it is a vengeful undercurrent.    

Where their previous albums leaned more in the direction of scathing anthems, things here feel much more personal and held closer to the chest rather than waved like the flag of a rebellion, when things get bigger and more in your face on a song like "X's On Her Eyes". The sung vocals work really well here, not the best singing that will make Trent Reznor question his status, but a needed shift to add a different color to their sound. It has the punch of old Marilyn Manson. It is interesting how things are more introspective, when you consider how these guys have always sounded like they were screaming out the soundtrack to the end of the world and now that the symptoms of the apocalypse are closer in the reality of that has settled into the lyrics here. This makes a song like "Catastrophic" hold more weight even when they are holding back, with a less confrontational and more speculative mood.  

There is an ambient synthwave like piece that precedes the last song, making it two instrumentals that are not being counted for the purpose of grading the album. It should have just been the first few bars of the last song, but you cannot fault a band for testing the waters and trying something different. "Blood Out" is the last song and mood wise it picks up where the piece before it left off. The vocals are more whispered and there is that industrial ballad feel to it. It's not like the power ballads of rock bands as it is a creepy cinematic piano vibe. The lyric " I do not want to know / why you never believed in me" is more sung than most of the vocal's efforts invested in this album.  Instead of giving you the big riff ending, they let it just disappear into a fade. I like this album but will give it a 9 as it is not as aggressive as what I normally want from these guys and becoming more melodic did not go as I would have planned if, but if you are a fan, it is hard not to love what they did here instead.   

 

Apocalypse Playlist- Industrial Edition

This is the 2nd installation of my soundtracks for the apocalypse version of the weekly playlist, which I stopped calling that as life happens and I did not feel as inspired to make one every week or I got depressed and it did not seem to matter. I think music matters more than ever now. Industrial makes the most sense after metal, due to the dystopian nature of the sound and aesthetic . I have heard people in the goth/ industrial scene say ridiculous things like they can not take any more gloom and doom and speaking as if an apocalypse was something to be feared rather than embraced. Fuck that. We all have an ending. Why live your life in fear of the inevitable. I understand not every one has the gleeful anticipation of it as I do. Much like a kid preparing for X-mas. Only after many false alarms and Santa failing to arrive, you begin to become jaded about such claims. The as my mom pointed out I have already died three times so will likely have to live through this to. At least maybe I will get some opportunities for cannibalism in a future that is less distant than it was yesterday. So here is a soundtrack to lean into darkness with and embrace destruction. Mankind is the virus, this is the Earth finding the cure.



3Teeth- "Affluenza"





Front 242 - "Gripped By Fear" 





Youth Code- "Sick Skinned" 






KMFDM - "Virus" 





Author & Punisher - "Ill Consuming"


 

Frontline Assembly- " Wake Up the Coma" 




Pysclon Nine - Divine Infekt 




Killing Joke - " I Am the Virus" 




 Die Krupps - "Destination Doomsday" 




HEALTH- "Slaves of Fear" 

Psyclon Nine : Order of the Shadow Act 1

This is the San Fran band's final album, so there's no second act. I did not give these guys a shot until, clicking around on Spotify one day because I had had always assumed them to sound like they looked which is a bunch of pretty boys from Vampirefreaks.com, and lumped them in with the other bands from the Myspace era like Motionless in White. While the black metal tag gets thrown around a lot with these guys, I think it is safe to say that regular readers here who know their metal will all confer this is not black metal. It is pretty decent industrial metal,  ignoring the fact this sort of thing died with Fear Factory. They wail on into a vacuum and some how managed to not sound like dated mall metal.

They pick where they left off on "We the Fallen" the syncopation is a tad heavier on the opening track. The screechy vocals are a static layer over the dense chug. They avoid most of the radio clichés the genres forefather's used in terms of hooks, though the call and response on the verse of "Suffer Well" has echoes on Marilyn Manson to it. But this type of smarter song writing is a welcome departure from the vocalist doing variation of the same pattern like the previous album. The song crescendos into several wrathful cheers.

The trash tinged "Glamour Through Debris" delivers a riff that reminds me of the more metallic moments from Front Line Assembly during the 90's. It breaks down into an apocalyptic drum march and builds up using restraint rather than just going for the throat again. The album sounds great and the production is just what they need. The machine like white noise at the beginning of "Use Once and Destroy" transitions nicely into the fuzzed out synth of the verse. The songs are a lot catchier than what I have heard from the band previous to this release, they could use a slightly wider dynamic range , as aggression seems to be the only color they are painting these songs with most of the time. The exception to this rule comes by way of " the Saint and the Valentine" where they switch over to an acoustic guitar and clean vocals for the verse, not unlike Stabbing Westward and use the soft to loud formula. It's done effectively and provides a more melodic balance the album needs.

From the static "Remains of Eden" buzzes to life in a way that remind me of Author & Punisher at first before the more familiar vocal cadence emerges. It is well executed because normally I require a hint of more melody but the robotic crunch keeps me listening. Though the songs drones at the half way mark, it still manages some cohesion as it tests my tolerance for noise.Which might be weird because Skinny Puppy is one of my favorite bands and they use a shade more abrasion on albums like Rabies.

The title track lingers on its intro almost two minutes before kicking into what is a fairly straight forward militant drive.The pulse to the beat in the final minutes of this one is more like overdriven edm, if you really want to count straws.This is probably the most dynamically flat song on the album but even then it's not half bad.

I like the coat of darkness that hangs over everything and it takes center stage on the more Skinny Puppy feeling of "Take My Hand While I Take My Life" that is one of my favorite songs on the album, I like the guitar  melody haunting the chorus.While it's cluttered with noisy little interludes I'm not counting qas songs, since they are not taking up the space on my iPod, I'm sorry this is the bands last album as they are really growing as song writers , I'll round this one up to a 9.5.