Industrial Fucking Strength
(Earache)
by J. Lianna Ness
Earache Records is notorious for releasing extreme music, and their latest offering, Industrial F**king Strength, is no exception. They’ve joined forces with underground gabba label Industrial Strength Records and compiled 15 of the best, most furious hardcore techno tracks. Gabba (a Dutch term for “ruffneck”) originated in Holland’s hardcore rave scene and with distorted kick-drums, hyper-charged breakbeats, aggressive samples (everything from metal and hip hop, to horror movies) and mega-fast tempos that range from 180 to 250 bpm, it’s comparable to speed metal in its intensity, rage, and aggression.
The first track by Mescalinium features a kicky, but redundant hissing bass, and no samples. Disinterator has an interesting “bubble” bass that sounds like popcorn popping, and shooting laser effects. English Muffin utilizes that rapid 78rpm “Chipmunk” vocal style sampling that will be familiar to fans of the genre. OTT also uses this effect, occasionally breaking up the tempo so that it goes up and down, and has a nice, full symphonic sound. Strychnine employs whispery and watery-sounding vocal sampling with swirling synth sound effects, giving the tune a futuristic “space-age” feel. Ralphie Dee‘s “Mad As Hell” starts out with that classic movie line from Network, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” and then cleverly uses the “mad as hell” bit in an endless loop sample with a repetitive and rhythmic beat. The “chipmunk”-style vocal sampling is used again by Delta Nine, but the words go by so insanely fast that they’re impossible to decipher. Rob Gee‘s “Gabber Up Your Ass” consists mostly of a hard, throbbing bass line and a simple, monotonous two-note synth sample with crazy bpm’s that slow down only for samples (a heavy metal guitar riff, for example) that are thrown in haphazardly. DOA offer two amazing tracks – “I Wanna Be A Gangsta” begins with more classic film dialogue, this time from Taxi Driver, before launching into an all-out, bass-heavy aural attack with lots of scary-sounding samplings of distorted guitars and fuzzy growls. Their second contribution, “Ya Mutha,” which opens with a sample of an obscene phone call, is a noisy nightmare of palpitating bass beats and samples of a guy talking dirty. Bloody Fist‘s two offerings, “Cuntface” and “Cocksucker,” are the most angry-sounding songs on this disc, full of expletives, screaming, and banging noises. If animosity were music, this is what it would sound like. DJ Skinhead‘s “Extreme Terror” is appropriately titled – the song definitely exudes a panic-stricken feeling. The same goes for Temper Tantrum, who start out slow and unassuming, then turn into a blistering killer-bee drone that will bludgeon your eardrums (pun intended).
The second disc offers two continuous mixes by DJs Liza N Eliaz and Manu Le Malin. Both keep up the hyper-fast BPMs, eccentric sampling and ferocity that is gabba. If you like your music hard and heavy, fast and frenzied, violent and virulent, you’ll froth like a rabid dog over this two-disc set.
