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Lets pretend it's 2006. Name an industrial band or a shock rock band who was around back then. Maybe Mushroomhead? Most people just looked at them as a bad Slipknot knock-off, and they are more nu-metal than industrial anyway. A lot of people still liked Rammstein, but most don't know anything past Du Hast. Marilyn Manson was about to release Eat Me, Drink Me, so you can't count on that guy (though I did love that album - fight me if you must). What else is out there? Sure, for the initiated you could rattle off bands all day long, but for the layman, who was popular?
There really wasn't anyone. Industrial died off (at least in the U.S.) after Rammstein went off the air (again, in the U.S.) and it hasn't really made much of a resurgence despite the growing number of EDM artists. There was a huge gap in "shock rock" in 2006, which makes me wonder: Why didn't anyone fucking tell me about Psyclon Nine?! And for that matter, why wasn't anyone screaming the praises of Psyclon Nine from the rooftops?!
Psyclon Nine are industrial gods who you have probably never heard of. Technically, they are classified as "Aggrotech" or "Electro-Industrial", but no one knows what those terms are. The skinny of their sound is this: Hard saw synth, slamming drums, distorted and morphed vocals, guitars that are doing something I'm sure, and one mother fucker of a sound. While Psyclon Nine are definitely not the only ones who were playing music like this, they absolutely perfected that craft.
Back to what I was talking about before, my mind is boggled by the fact that they were never part of daily conversations and filled in that "shock rock" hole we had at the time. There was Combichrist and Dawn of Ashes which got some discussion among the Vampirefreaks crowd, but fuck them (I was one of them); I'm talking about front stage, headlining amphitheaters, causing nightmares, and ruining the hopes and dreams of Christian moms all across America. They had that potential. They have that sound. By all accounts it should have happened, but for some reason it just...didn't.
I didn't find out about them until 2010 when I stumbled across their album Crown Thy Fornicator while working in a Hot Topic warehouse. A store had sent back their stock and I was tasked with cataloging the intake. I had made a habit of writing down bands and albums that looked interesting so I could look them up later, and theirs was not about to slip by me. I have been a huge fan of theirs eversince and consider it the one and only perk from working at Hot Topic's warehouse.
Circumstances aside, you'd be hard pressed to find a bad song by Psyclon Nine. Tracks off of Crown Thy Fornicator hold a special place in my heart but all of their albums are solid from front to back. They're one of the few bands I can say doesn't have a single bad album. They locked in their style early on and merely perfected it over the years without ever wavering on the core idea. Because of this I can't suggest any particular album - I can only recommend all of them. Pull up Spotify, throw a dart at your phone, and whatever song that dart lands on is the one you should listen to. Be sure to turn the bass up though. Remember, if you don't feel the bass in your pants-parts then you're not listening to industrial correctly.
Signed, Tommy Panzram
Post-note: I just wanted to clear something up that I brought up at the beginning of this blog. Marilyn Manson has been accused of some pretty fucked up stuff that I won't go into because that is not what this blog is about. While I don't condone those actions he is accused of, I am not going to deny the fact that I, like many of my generation, was a fan of his in the mid-2000's. This is a sort-of retrospective blog about bands who I felt didn't and still do not get the recognition I feel they deserve, but in order to go back in time to discuss who wasn't popular we will occasionally have to bring up who was popular - and Manson was popular. These days he looks less like the Antichrist Superstar and more like bacon fat in eyeliner (and has just as much respect in the music world), but you cannot deny his role in pop-culture in the 2000s.
To listen to Psyclon Nine click the link below:
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