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STRUCK 9 "Democracy"
Year: 2010
Genre: Electronic/Industrial
Country: Colombia
Label: Black Leather Records
Track List:
- Bodyrage
- Revolutionary Progress
- Default
- Democracy
- Delta Force
- Antipatriota
- Gunmaster
- Combustion
- Antipatriota (Tech Nomader remix)
I have a lot of new music for you, and let me start from an album by a non-metal band. Struck 9 is an electro-industrial project from Medellin, Antioquia (Colombia), formed in 2008. The name "Struck 9" is a reference to September 11, 2001 events. The members of Struck-9 define their genre as "Industrial" and "EBM"... though the difference between "EBM" and "dark electro" isn't clear for me, and I hope it wouldn't be a big mistake to place this album under the "dark electro" tag.
Struck 9 were highly influenced by local punk bands, namely Fertil Miseria, Restos de Tragedia, I.R.A, Desadaptadoz, Encisos After The Rain. They're currently working on a tribute to these bands. As for their ideological influences, it looks like they were mostly influenced by Maoism, but they also respect the "other activists and revolutionaries against the political system". And of course, one of the most important sources of their inspiration is the armed conflict in Colombia, which is still ongoing since the 1960s.
"Democracy" is their first album, freely available to download and share. They also have performed live in Colombia, and they have been asked to play in Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Sweden and Germany. But all the needed paperwork and requirements are kind of difficult to get, because a lot of people still believe that all Colombians are narco-terrorists...
myspace
Dark Electro is a rather vague term, but it's normally taken to be a subgenre of electro-industrial (that is to say bands like Skinny Puppy or perhaps Wumpscut, Frontline Assembly). It is difficult to draw exact influences between these genres because they are often invented as basically marketing terms by the labels/bands themselves or invented by journalists or fans trying to pigeonhole everything (much like some of the more egregious genres in the metal scene!). The main difference between electro-industrial and EBM, or at least classic/old-school EBM, is the layering. EBM tends to sound like it came from the 80's: strong synth and bassline, minimal vocal distortion or harsh vocals, built over either digital silence or tape hiss. What people call dark electro tends to be far more layered, and to include harsher and more distorted vocals, and a lot of background samples and so on. There are also differences in the kind of BPMs and beats used, but really it's probably the kind of thing people shouldn't worry too much about. I personally never use the term dark electro and barely ever the term electro-industrial, but other people are different.
ReplyDeleteAnother key difference between the genres, old-sk00l EBM tends to be syncopated a lot more and feature uncorrupted vocals, while the more recent stuff is standard 4/4 beats and more or less unintelligible vocals =)
ReplyDeleteSyncopation is not used enough these days. Makes the music boring to listen to imho ^^