COLDWAVES 2020 "Lost Weekend"

Wow, when you thought online live streamed festivals couldn't get any better, COLDWAVES put together an amazing festival!! A lot of the other festivals were basically just live streamed band performances, but this festival (granted a lot of this stuff was pre-recorded)... amazing... there's all kinds of amazing videos, performances, music video commentary (Chris Vrenna, Martin Atkins, and what I do believe is the director for both "Down In It" and "Head Like A Hole" video(s), talk about Nine Inch Nails "Head Like A Hole" as well as "Down In It" and the stories around the videos and how they were made, and kinda what happened around the filming of those videos)... even premiers of new music videos and all that kind of stuff... great!! I honestly think this is the best live streamed festival so far!! Makes me want to actually be at a future COLDWAVES! If you missed it, you really missed out!! Plus, they are trying to raise funds for the Darkest Before Dawn charity... the blurb says this: 

"Welcome to Darkest Before Dawn. We are a new non-profit, based in Chicago and Los Angeles, with one simple yet urgent goal: to provide resources, support, and community for our nightlife, restaurant and music venue industry, who's late hours and isolated commutes leave them susceptible to depression, addiction and suicide. Recent data points to a high rate of chemical dependency and suicide for this demographic in our country, especially in the very industries built to provide excitement, leisure and happiness to everyone else. They are the people heading home in the early morning hours, when businesses are closed, the streets are empty, and it truly is the darkest period of time before the dawn."

I realize this is a U.S. charity, but for folks who read this blog that are from the U.S., you can check out Darkest Before Dawn here!

Here's a Canadian Musician charity... it's called UNISON! Here's a little blurb about them:

"Unison Benevolent Fund is a non-profit, registered charity that provides counselling and emergency relief services to the Canadian music community. We are here to help professional music-makers in times of hardship, illness or economic difficulties."

There's hope out there folks!!

Stay safe, stay positive!!

Industrial Metal... The Journey.

(Nailbomb)

So, as of recently I've been on an industrial metal journey... or well... just really interested in finding bands that do or did industrial metal. There were a couple of things that kind of kicked this recent journey off, one... there's a band I came across on Bandcamp called: Black Magnet... they are a dark black/doom/industrial metal band... I wanted to purchase a physical copy of their latest album "Hallucination Scene"... and that kinda spurred this whole deep dive into industrial metal music! Afterwards, randomly I came across a band from the mid-90's called: Nailbomb, which I had never heard before and to be honest, I'm not sure why they didn't cross my musical periphery when I was younger, but they did not... and discovering a video of their performance at some concert in the 90s on Youtube... I really enjoyed it and that is kinda how, I've ended up on this search for industrial metal bands (interesting enough Dino Cazares of Fear Factory was a session player on the Nailbomb album "Point Blank", and Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly played keys for Nailbomb for their one and only live concert).

There's things in the past that I passed over when I was a teenager, like Danzig's "Blackacidevil" where he fired his old band and went industrial (as at the time, it seemed every metal or rock band that had darker themes were inserting industrial elements into their music... I mean, Nine Inch Nails was at the peak of their Self-Destruct Tour and the whole "The Downward Spiral" era, and because of that tour, Industrial music was becoming more popular, and a lot of bands were jumping on the bandwagon), so... now I want that in my physical collection... cause it's industrial music history, and even though he was kind of jumping on the bandwagon, I thought the album was fairly solid. Even crossover bands like Prong I'm trying to find their stuff on CD (got one coming in the mail)... I mean Tommy Victor front man of Prong, had a stint in Danzig during the industrial phase of Danzig (he also appeared in the video for "Sacrifice"). He also toured and played guitars for Ministry. Course there's other stuff too, like Godflesh... which I've recently been checking out their stuff, which is something I passed over in the past, but now I want this stuff in my collection. It's really interesting all the kind of stuff that is out there... and finding stuff that is new to me in the vein of industrial metal... I mean there's all kinds of stories associated with this stuff too... how some of these bands were connected to each other in some way... yeah...

This journey so far has been fun, trying to find physical CDs rather than just picking up digital stuff, at least... if there is physical, if there isn't then I do go the digital route! I can't wait to continue in this journey... and kinda see how deep the rabbit hole goes... It's really interesting finding all this weird obscure shit (Black Magnet), and all that kind of stuff.

If you folks have any suggestions as to what I should take a listen to in the industrial metal vein, please leave those suggestions in the comments!

I'll likely post my progress in this journey, to let you know where I'm at, and maybe you have suggestions along the way!!

Stay positive, stay safe!!

Shayne "Daemon_w60" Lawrence / Twitch / Trippingonacable Records

Nine Inch Nails, Memories, and a Live Stream!

Yes... it's been quite sometime since I've given Nine Inch Nails a good listen. I found that during this pandemic, the lyrics are a little too depressing to really focus on it and enjoy listening to it, but last night "Head Like A Hole (Soil)" randomly came on my playlist... and it reminded me, that first I love Nine Inch Nails, and second... I love industrial music... not sure why, the mix just really clicked, and I felt inspired! So, the rest of yesterday and today I've been listening to NIN's back-catalogue... and really enjoying it. Not sure what changed there... but it seems to be what I want to listen to right now.

I thought I would share what tracks in particular are inspiring me right now:

(Nine Inch Nails "Head Like A Hole (Soil)")

I remember when I first heard this track, total inspiration, has a bit of a hiphop vibe:

(Nine Inch Nails "Closer (Deviation)")

This particular track, I remember when I first got this CD, loved it! Lot's of inspiration, and I actually prefer this mix of "March Of The Pigs" rather than the original mix:

(Nine Inch Nails "All The Pigs, All Lined Up")

It's really a lot of fun right now being back to having NIN in the playlist, there's sooo many memories, and reminders of why I love industrial music in general, and there is so much inspiration. I remember when I was first jamming with my first band Adam Hates You, and we would listen to stuff like this... and take inspiration from it. There were so many ideas, and truthfully speaking, I was finding my voice (vocally, and musically) and even though we didn't really go anywhere with it (and a lot of it was, us really jamming out), there was a lot of fun... I remember at the time, going into the music instrument stores in the area (H.E.L. Music), and checking out synthesizers and figuring out what I really wanted in a synth, and how I was gonna translate the stuff that I was creating into a live show. I remember looking at initially, the Alesis Q synth if I'm not mistaken, and testing it out, and playing with the sounds and stuff... and there were some patches in it, that kind of sounded like NIN patches... there was another synth I checked out (I can't remember for the life of me, what the name of it was), but ultimately I decided not to purchase either of them... I remember walking into Mothers Music (just down the street from H.E.L), and playing around with another synth, and it looked like a really cool synth... and I looked at the price tag... and at the time I thought "At that price ($2500), it's gotta be a good synth", for some reason the name of that synth stuck with me (Yamaha EX7)... and then eventually I ended up picking it up (years and years later)... and I still have it! 

(Nine Inch Nails "The Art Of Self-Destruction, Part One)

Lot's of memories from that time. There was a little goth/industrial scene in that city (Saskatoon) at the time, and a lot, if not all of my friends were doing industrial music in some way... Adam Hates You had a rotating roster (basically whoever showed up to jam), and even though I ended up dissolving that band and moving to Calgary, Alberta... it was really a time of exploration, and my first foray into writing industrial music, and kinda figuring out what exactly I wanted to do. A friend had given me a copy of a freeware DOS program called Impulse Tracker... and that's how I wrote my first track... really experimenting, finding my voice and sound, and then eventually some of those tracks ended up turning into Twitch's first "Self-titled" release.

(Nine Inch Nails "The Downward Spiral (The Bottom)")

Definitely, not feeling nostalgic, definitely don't want to go back to those times, but definitely reminded of why I love industrial music, and what got me into it in the first place!

I hope you folks are doing well, I hope you are staying safe, I hope you are staying positive!

Shayne "Daemon_w60" Lawrence / Twitch / Trippingonacable Records

(Your Canadian Goth/Rivethead)

P.S.: We got this live stream show coming up on September 24th/2020 on our Twitch Facebook Page, which you can confirm your attendance here!

We hope you folks join us!!