This month’s music recap is an interesting one, for me at least, because I have absolutely no recollection of listening to some of this music! More on that as we get to it. As ever, let’s start with Top Artists.
Top Artists
First on the list is Front Line Assembly. They were in my top artists for 2024 and in general I listen to them a lot. They are pretty much exactly the sort of industrial music I like listening to the most and are always evolving their sound over time so never get old. This month, I listened to an old album I haven’t really listened to much. More on that below.
Next up are Noisecream and Fury Weekend, two artists I don’t really remember listening to. I know from the albums below that I listened to the Noisecream album that I usually play a lot, so much so that it made my top albums of 2024, but I simply couldn’t understand Fury Weekend making the top artists. Then the Apple Journal app that I half heartedly use occasionally came to my rescue. That app also tracks your music and I can see that I listened to a lot of Fury Weekend on the way home from a night out. There are two things that make me forgetful – stress (ask the missus how many times I’ve left the front door open when I’m stressed) or booze. I hadn’t had much booze that night, my friend and I only had 3 pints and left reasonably early, but we were both caught up in the middle of a lot of life stress and unloading through moaning, so maybe that addled my brain. I can only assume I was reading something on the train home and not really listening to the music. Thank goodness for the commoditisation and constant tracking of music habits via apps, huh, or I’d never know what happened. Anyway, Fury Weekend describe themselves as a retrowave rock project and I have a few tracks from them in my big synthwave playlist because they have a nice 80s vibe.
On to things I do remember. I really like Butcher Babies at number 4. I think they were seen as a gimmick at first because they had two scantily clad, good looking front women but I think their music is genuinely some great metal. They came on whilst I was listening to my metal playlist and reminded me how much I like them so I ended up listening to couple of their albums – Goliath (2013) and Take It Like a Man (2015) – which were not long enough to make Apple Music’s top albums by minutes, below.
I’ve still been listening to Psycho Charger after first hearing of their stuff last month.
Top Songs
Maniacal by Front Line Assembly came on when I was working and I asked Siri to just play some music, and it was a FLA song I didn’t really know too well, but I liked it. It led me back to the album it’s from, which I’ll talk about below.
At number 2 is The One by Jordan F (feat. Quails). If you know me and you listen to this song, you’d think it wouldn’t be my sort of thing at all but after I fell down the Synthwave rabbit hole many years ago, I’ve become a bit more mellow with my music choices and quite a lot of synthpop like this has crept into my playlists. The track does not feature any real quails.
I listened to Fade to Black by Metallica at number 3 a couple of times because, to be honest, February was a pretty stressful month at times and I was pretty miserable and sometimes it helps me to embrace and dwell in the misery. I even made a playlist called Misery which you may think is not a good idea, but it works for me. Have a good listen to Fade to Black and really listen to the lyrics. Very miserable.
Massaker by Suicide Commando is an absolute aggrotech banger. Loud, angry and sinister. Suicide Commando creeps into these lists most months. Great stuff.
Finally, Warp Nine by Overad. I just had to listen to this again as I had no idea what it was. In this age of music streaming, I hear to many songs and add them to a playlist without even looking at who sings them or what they are called. I would describe this as synthwave of the video game soundtrack type. And I like it.
Top Albums
Civilisation (2004) by Front Line Assembly, as I said above, is an album by one of my favourite bands that I haven’t listened to very much. It’s a solid example of their industrial sound, but to me just not as great as some of their other stuff. It was kind of nice to listen to some FLA that I’m not always listening too though.
I already mentioned that I didn’t really remember listening to Midnight Fight Express Pt.1 (2022) by Noisecream (previously covered in my top albums of 2024) and I don’t really remember listening to Trials of the Blood Dragon (2016) by Power Glove either. Luckily, thanks to my fine detective work/investigative journalism (looking in the Journal app), I can see I listened to them both on the same Thursday afternoon when I was working. Work has been the main stressor in February so I can only imagine I whacked two video game soundtracks on whilst working my arse off to keep the momentum going but didn’t really listening to them whilst flying through work to meet some ludicrous deadline. Trials of the Blood Dragon is very synthwavy and a fun yet hard video game too.
I do remember listening to Dos Dedos Mi Amigos (1994) by Pop Will Eat Itself because my favourite track, Everything’s Cool, came on and I figured let’s give the album another try. I first heard Everything’s Cool when it was included in a compilation CD called Go Ape that came free with Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. Why is my music taste so intrinsically tied to video gaming? Anyway, Everything’s Cool was probably the first time I ever heard any sort of industrial music (kind of) and I really liked it and it had an impact on my musical taste for the rest of my life. Anything sort of industrial metal has just always sounded so incredible to me and as a genre I think I love it the most. It’s a shame I don’t really like the rest of this album. Every now and then I forget I don’t like it and give it another go, and every time I think “well I won’t be doing that again”. I bet I do.
I listened to Mark of the Psycho Charger (2010) by Psycho Charger because I was still listening to Psycho Charger after finding out about them last month. More great monster/spooky themed psychobilly.
Matt Hart 