Available as free download at the Autopsia website, FACTORY RITUALS is a soundtrack they did for an exhibition held in Belgrade back in 1989. The seven tracks of the album bring me back to the sound of the early Autopsia releases (the "Palladium", "The Knife" and "Death is the Mother of Beauty" years") when they used choruses, industrial sounds and military rhythms. I really appreciated this release as the tracks are able to create an hypnotic atmosphere (see track IV for example with that looped strings/blows orchestra) avoiding the boredom effect. Mind you, Autopsia isn't offering these high quality mp3s for free because they aren't worth a CD release as all the seven tracks are good ones. Download them all while they are available!

I can't say I have fully enjoyed this album, because Prurient's THE BLACK POST SOCIETY is perfect for causing damage to your hearing. Behind a sort of new primitivism attitude (the info sheet talks about the depression of the hunter after he kills his prey) Prurient aim is to keep the adrenaline level high by creating a saturated wall of sound where behind distorted vocals you can find echoes of melodies and structured layers of industrial sounds. Having a sort of black metal approach to sound, Prurient recorded vocals that are at least 10dB higher than the rest and then built tracks that could be interesting if decrypted. "Rose comet" for example has a first part where vocals are kinda balanced and then you can listen to the industrial dark ambient texture he created. The same goes with the following tracks "Wooden weapons", "Mask of the boys" and "Month lengthening into years" and actually if you are into this genre you can like the maniacal atmospheres he proposes. Lyrics are kinda hermetic as their structure recalled me haiku where flashes of phrases are given to express a situation.

Originally formed in 1987 (at the time of their Broken Flag tape) by Dave Kirby and Robert Maycock. After Maycock's departure, Justin Mitchell joined in early 1994. Satori disbanded in 1996. A decade later Mitchell resurrected the project with Neil Chaney (Pessary) and soon after they released a split live album recorded in Japan with Sutcliffe Jugend. CONTEMPTUS MUNDI is the third release of the new Satori incarnation (before that they released on April 2008 an album titled "Kanashibari", reissued now on CD by Cold Spring) and it sees the collaboration of Magus Peter H Gilmore, High Priest of the Church Of Satan reading his writing. The main track is based on an adaptation of an the essay "Pervasive pantywaistism" published on Peter H Gilmore's book titled The Satanic Scriptures published by Scapegoat Publishing. On the essay Gilmore criticize the weakness of the modern world and it remembers me Boyd Rice when talk about new Darwinism issues. Musically the track convinced me as it creates a thick mix of magmatic sounds with distant drums, treated chants and creepy atmospheres which seem coming from the bowels of the earth. The second track of the album is a revised instrumental remix of the first one (for this reason I cut half star from my rate).

For those who have never been granted the pleasure to be introduced to Die Krupps: it was/is a trio from Dusseldorf, Germany, who was amongst the leading representatives of the electro-metal genre, way before somebody else started calling it industrial-metal. What set(s) them apart from more famous bands like Ministry or Nine Inch Nails is that they were really an EBM band at heart but had this enormous guitar riffs to back up their electronic tracks. I used to be a huge Die Krupps fan back in the days and in my opinion they represent one of the historical and pioneering bands of that genre and somehow never enjoyed the level of popularity they deserved. I used to buy all their records and singles, every time they came out. Then they broke up and singer Jurgen Engler formed DKay.com (www.dkay.de) and I kind of lost touch with them for a while. While browsing through the shelves of the Rasputina record store in Berkley, CA, I found this CD and bought it right away. "I" was originally released in 1992. It was called "I" ("one") because it featured a ground-breaking electronic version of Metallica's ballad "One" (later Die Krupps released a "Tribute to Metallica" EP album of all electronic versions of some of Metallica's songs) and also because it was the first in a trilogy that included 1993 "II - The Final Option" and 1996 "III - Odyssey of Mind". This new double CD version of "I" (released August 2008) has the same art work as the old one and brings you a digitally remastered version of the original album (a classic in my collection) also featuring five early demo tracks from back in 1990. An additional CD offers a remixed version of the same album with the addition of three unreleased non-guitar bonus tracks.
Obviously you need to be a real Die Krupps die hard fan to enjoy listening to the same album twice (basically the new mixes are very similar really, which is almost a shame because I would have preferred the "remix" CD to be remixes by other people and not just new mixes of the old - even though they already have a couple of remix albums in their discography) but nevertheless it could be a great introduction to Die Krupps for somebody that's not familiar with them (although I should say that there are a couple of best-of's available for that purpose as well). Well I had to buy it for myself and I am enjoying listening to this stuff again after so many years. I grew up with this record so it's kind of hard for me not to like it, I know/remember every note and guitar chord so I can detect some of the subtle differences in the mixes. For those that were never Krupps fans I would still recommend it, as long as you do yourself the service of also buying one of their more recent albums to get a better idea of what they have been all about throughout their almost 20 year long record-making career.

The first question every Electro/Industrial-junkie asks, is the one, how much Nivek Ogre’s new solo-album will sound like a work of the famous veterans SKINNY PUPPY. I guess all readers of this web resource are familiar with PUPPY, therefore it doesn’t need any further excursions into their meaningful career. But OHGR is OGHR and hasn’t got too much to do with the famous Canadian giants. "Devil In My Details" comes out full of experiments, which multiple unheard sounds (you should hear the brass interments (!!!) on "Feelin’ Chicken"). Has Ogre especially under the PUPPY-moniker being often discovered as a spooky and scary person, the open-minded musician shines through his solo work. It is at least the work, which strengthens his status as being a real musician over his status as being the monstrous vocalists of a scene-related icon. His vocal performance is surely the one and only unique point which reminds on PUPPY, but that can’t be avoided. But thanks to the already reached status Ogre has received so far, this new album comes out quite unconventional, unorthodox and full of weird ideas. It isn’t a "hit" album which has to follow selling-related structures, it’s rather more the psychotic result, if Ogre and his band members are able produce without boundaries. Therefore most of the tracks are following each other without clear interruptions and it was intended to produce an album with only one long track. But at least here’s the point, where the record company has set a stop. If you’re ready for a musically quite diverse coarse, then give this album a try.