Sister Machine Gun

Sister Machine Gun was another band that I discovered, funny enough, at the same concert as Chemlab. SMG were the second opening act that night and I was really impressed with frontman Chris Randall's charisma and delivery. I was sure they were going to become the breakthrough industrial act, but that ended up being Nine Inch Nails. Wrong on that count, but SMG put out some of my favorite music through the '90s and into the new millennium. They just had a groove and swagger that set them apart in the genre.

Chemlab

Digging back through the '90s has been so fun, I can't stop. The first time I saw Chemlab, they were the first opening band, I'd never heard of them, and the singer came out wearing tin foil over his face. I bought everything I could find - which was only this album and an earlier EP - the next day. It still sounds good to my ears. It's the kind of thing that would fit right in if there were a bar scene in Blade Runner.

VNV Nation - from dark into light

From the dark sounds of the industrial/electro scene comes VNV Nation, a group who make earnest, emotive, positive, anthemic fist-shakers that also happen to be danceable. Yes, every album follows the same blueprint, but there are enough really great songs in their catalog to more than justify their continued existence and make the faithful always looking forward to the next one.

Front 242 - Front By Front

Front 242... you couldn't go to a club in the late '80s without hearing that classic refrain "one, you lock the target..." This was always my favorite album, kind of like they'd spent the early 1980s refining their sound just to create this. In a way, Depeche Mode paved a similar sound and formula, but added in the pop songwriting that ended up making them superstars. Front 242 went on to make some great music in the early-90s, too, before splintering.

25Men - the many faces of James Ray

James Ray and the Performance, James Rays Gangwar, MK Ultra, The Sisterhood... James Ray has taken on many incarnations for his musical output. Some people wrote him off as a sub-Sisters of Mercy copy, but I think he had more in common with 80s "industrial" bands like Front 242, Mussolini Headkick, etc. Anyway, this outfit, dubbed 25Men, is my favorite. Released in 2008, it reminds me of unstructured early '90s industrial music.

The Sisters of Mercy

The Sisters of Mercy produced some of the '80s most seminal music. And even into the early '90s. Floodland is my favorite, mostly because it didn't sound like anything else at the time and thus, it has aged pretty well, despite being essentially a synth album. So many '80s band, especially ones using electronics, seemed to be using presets of keyboard and drum sounds and now are embarrassing relics of New Wave. But Floodland still has a grand guignol bombast and mystery to it. Like the sea...

Sky Cries Mary

Seattle band Sky Cries Mary started out as the moniker of Roderick Romero, who released 2 albums of rather uninteresting experimental soundscapes in the late-80s. He then formed a proper band, turning out some of the most original music of the 1990s. This Timeless Turning sounds like nothing else I own. With the soaring vocals of Anisa Romero, they are at times delicate, spiritual and overwhelming. Interesting postscript: Roderick and Anisa now focus on building treehouses and furniture...

no, really: http://www.interiorprovisions.com/