In its 22 years of existence, industrial music has produced cult heroes such as Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Laibach, and Hate Dept. It has produced superstars such as Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. It's produced long-standing, well-respected artists such as Skinny Puppy and Nitzer Ebb. However, until now, with the release of Strap-On's Antipsychotic, it has never produced pure, transcendent, brilliant beauty.
Over the course of its eleven tracks, Antipsychotic encompasses everything that industrial music is about, and then goes several steps beyond. The album tackles such complex issues as compulsive bad plastic surgery ("Narcissus Incision"), entemophilia ("Bugfuck"), and, in "Nothing Burn," by far the most innovative and original industrial song recorded this decade, the ideas both of nothing and of burning.
The instrumentation on the album is impeccable, and the nightmarescapes it paints are disturbing in their reflection of society. And the yearning, innocent cries of teenage love in "Baby I Want to Be Your Man" are more poignant than anything yet produced by Candlebox, Warrant, or Poison.
Strap-On go above and beyond the industrial call-to-arms, unafraid to face the techno-organic nightmare that our society has become. The piercing electronic sonic lances of melody (or rather, remnants of melody) and the churning, milkshake-thick rhythms drive into the listener's ears and brain until he has no recourse but to cry, "My God! What has become of us?"
That's what Strap-On does for me. What they will do for the world, only time will tell.