Various – Death Odors

Among my favorite death industrial albums. There's a lot of variety here and the selection is carefully arranged. The excursion into Alio Die's murky dreamlike moods in the middle is quite welcome, and the Grey Wolves track at the end ranks among my favorites from their catalog. Excellent listening at any time of the year, but I prefer midwinter.

This early Slaughter Productions compilation presents an excellent starting point, and overview, of the Death Industrial genre. The sounds presented here are typified by a dense atmosphere, low-end drones, and occaisonal distorted vocals. I've always considered Death Industrial to be a combination of aspects of Dark/Ritual Ambient with the quieter atmospheres of the Power Electronics subgenre.

MEGAPTERA (Sweden): This long-running unit (discontinued in 1999) was one of the first to be associated with Sweden's revered Cold Meat Industry label. Somewhere between Archon Satani, In Slaughter Natives and Brighter Death Now, Megaptera is a reflection of a time when insanity, violence, lies, deceit, war, disease and death rule the planet.

RAISON D'ETRE (Sweden): raison d'etre is a well-established Swedish dark-ambient-industrial project by Peter Andersson, active since 1991 and with a large number of CD releases on Cold Meat Industry... Peter's side projects include Necrophorus, Atomine Elektrine, Bocksholm, Stratvm Terror and more....

INANNA (Sweden): Solo project of Mikael Stavöstrand after the split in Archon Satani.

ATOM INFANT INCUBATOR (Italy): bleak soundscapes by of RUNES ORDER and DIE SONNE SATAN.

DEAF MACHINE (Sweden): An early project by Mikael Svensson, of Megaptera, is now finally documented! Its mix of muffled voice fragments, disted rhythm loops, and crude, bass-heavy synth-noises sound unlike anything else that came out of sweden at the time!

DIE SONNE SATAN (Italy): Coldest, finest Dark Ambient - sometimes darkminded and frightening, then tribal-percussive, sometimes hypnotic, then again haunting with slight background-chorals.

RUNES ORDER (Italy): Synth-based darkness that often delves too deep into Euro-Darkwave territory.

ARCHON SATANI (Sweden): A dark ritual project, playing eerie and haunting industrial ambient music with a satanic background, obsessive percussions and frightening demonic voices. The original line-up consisted of Tomas Pettersson and Mikael Stravöstrand. They worked together from 1990 to 1993, then the former went on to form Ordo Equilibrio, while the latter continued under the name Archon Satani, as well as with his other project Inanna.

ALIO DIE (Italy): Stefano Musso studied art and electronics in his home town of Milan, Italy, and began performing ambient-electronic music under the name Alio Die in 1989. Characterized by evocative acoustic sounds manipulated and tendered electronically, Alio Die's work builds intimate soundscapes tied to the mystery and majesty of life and nature. His CD "Under an Holy Ritual", released on Projekt in 1992, was received with international acclaim. He subsequently released more than 20 CDs, and collaborated with many well-known artists such as Robert Rich, Vidna Obmana, Mathias Grassow, Nick Parkin, Yannick Dauby, Amelia Cuni, Raffaele Serra, Ora, Antonio Testa.

CONSONO (Sweden): ConSono was formed in Södertälje, Sweden, 1990 by Jens Lindh and Magnus Bjärlind. 1991 saw the release of their first cassette Onus Uteri, featuring 8 tracks ranging from tribal sounds to experimental industrial. Onus Uteri was released on Sound Source, a side label of Cold Meat Industry.

ALLERSEELEN (Austria): The Austrian group Allerseelen have been active and innovative in the industrial and apocalyptic folk genre for many years. Their CDs and 7" editions have been issued on Aorta and their double-LP editions on Ahnstern. Allerseelen is a unique combination of industrial and folkloristic elements, and "Industrial Folklore" might be an appropriate expression to embrace these seemingly contradictory qualities. Allerseelen have performed in many European countries as well as in North America and Russia. On stage, the songs quite often manifest very differently from the studio versions. The dynamic stage presence of one or two martial drummers, the psychoactive bass player, and the front man all contribute toward a unique mood of "Apocalyptic Krautfolk" for these live performances.

SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS (Italy): Sshe Retina Stimulants (Super-Sound High Energy Retina Stimulants) was started in 1993 and is the solo project of P.NG5361.B (aka Paolo Bandera) of Sigillum S. An Italian post - industrial audio project of many different natures, where concepts have led the effort and employed sound as a tool for the exploration of the forbidden areas of the subconscious. The result has been a endless paradigm of alien electronic mutations, merging concrete noise research with acoustic transmigration, while visuals and many other forms of media have been also adopted, in order to achieve maximum interaction intensity.

GREY WOLVES (Australia): The Grey Wolves are Dave Padbury and Trevor Ward. They exist since the early '80s and have released a lot of tapes via their label Anal Probe, which later split into Artaman and Zeal SS, the latter changed it's name quite often and is nowadays Open Wound. In 1992 they were ed by Tesco Organisation and recorded their first LP. Their art is definied as "A Manifestation Of The Cultural Terrorism Network", and their packages and visuals are collages of disturbing and provocative images, photos and symbols. The Grey Wolves play heavy industrial noise with a genuine punk attitude, being irriverent and nasty, but never lacking self-irony.