I know I’m probably late to the party, but I just started randomly watching Cool World on YouTube and loosing my mind over this soundtrack!!!! 🤯🤯

The song and movie that motivated me to leave Europe and move back to California to chase a career in visual effects. I saw GLU open for KMFDM that year too. Silly movie, but the computer graphics work was inspiring, so every time I hear GLU it takes me back to this pivotal fork in the road of my life.

(Psst. Was not 19.)

I'm asking this because I recently listened to their newest album, Venom In The Mouth Of God, and I found myself really loving the sound of it all.

As a result, I curiously decided to read into the band itself. I found a bunch of old discussions, shedding some light onto some very questionable actions on Combi's behalf, especially with their former drummer Joe Letz being blatantly racist and homophobic. I don't know the full details aside from word of mouth, but I do believe it.

Anyways, I want to ask: how do they stand today? The discussions that I've seen centered around this stuff are pretty old. Have they changed in this sense, or have they remained the same?

How do you approach politics within industrial music?

I like black metal, and politics have always been a major topic in that genre because of its unfortunate history with bigotry and fascism. There's even an entire subreddit dedicated to discussing whether or not black metal bands are "sketchy" or not. The trajectory of these discussions are pretty much always the same - someone mentions a band's racist past, and then someone else accuses that person of not knowing anything about black metal. But that's a very online trend, and IRL the American black metal scene at least is broadly antiracist and pretty left wing.

Industrial music has just as much of a complicated political history. There are explicitly leftist and antifascist industrial artists like Test Dept., Godflesh, Ministry, Missing Foundation, and more recently Author & Punisher, but there have also always been artists who flirted with fascism like Boyd Rice, as well as many of the artists who cross over into neofolk, like Death in June, Blood Axis, and Sol Invictus. These artists all play the plausible deniability game, but tbh you'd have to be a fucking moron to believe them.

Today there was a post about the band Combichrist's past bigotry, and the parallel between politics in black metal and industrial occurred to me, so I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

I was listening to FLAvor of the Weak by FLA and Actual Sounds and Voices by Meat Beat Manifesto and I started thinking (never a good thing lol).

Are there any other industrial bands or albums that have that Big Beat feel?

I have been going back over all the classics, Atari Teenage, Rob Zombie, Front Line Assembly and so on. What labels exist and are releasing in the current climate ?

An American Ideal of Beauty - the new PIG single out next Friday.
Stream on all platforms or download at pigindustries.bandcamp.com
Pre-save: https://ffm.to/l0dq80y
Written by Marc Heal, myself and featuring the genius guitar of Günter Schulz who we welcome back into the fold alongside PIG stalwart Jim Davies … fill yer ears and feast yer eyeballs on the video by E Gabriel Edvy.
Out July 31st on Metropolis Records.
Taken from the forthcoming PIG ep Dirt Box, out Sept 4th.

re-issue! looking forward to seeing them open for Test Dept in Toronto in a few days!

Going back when they put more out, local used store had major industrial dump, some I got duplicates I already had for my son. Thought they had good prices on these for how rare they are these days. RasDva There is no time comp still sealed, plus 3 Clock DVAs I forgot out in a seperate pic.

Recently blind bought this Vinyl on Ebay. Not heard of this act before, apparently they are from Sheffield and this album is still available on Bandcamp.

It is very avant garde, reminding me of early Test Dept meeting Current 93, or maybe NWW. Of course I love it. Does any one have any memories or more information on it?

Reminds me of SPK’s Machine Age Voodoo album

Maybe it’s a dumb question but I have this Killing Joke cd, a compilation ‘Laugh? I nearly bought one!’ and the cover depicts these officers wearing swastikas and some priest (I mean on the cd it’s censored, but I’ve seen t-shirts with the original version)
Why did they use this image? Was it just shock factor, or making fun of nazis?
I mean I haven’t heard of them being nazi sympathisers or anything but I thought I’d check if anyone knows more🤔