Contrary to popular belief, many industrial albums actually aren't.

Sometimes, albums get called industrial because they have noisy bits, or hard beats, or, most likely, because the band that did them was once considered industrial. To set the record straight, I present to you a list of albums that for no good reason are considered industrial, but really aren't. They're really great albums, and the record needs to be set straight. I'm tired of seeing their reputations tarnished by rivetheads who long ago memorized a list of supposedly "classic" industrial records and namecheck them to feign some sort of credibility.

Much of this ignorance can be traced to the early '90s, when groups like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry became part of the soundtrack of choice for disenfranchised suburban teens; and as with any musical genre that touches a chord with teenagers hoping for a new tendril of rebellion to grasp onto, the immediacy of the music takes hold while its history and subtexts are lost.

So, what follows is a bit of a refresher course on what industrial music is, by highlighting seven albums that aren't. Read, learn and enjoy.

7 Cabaret Voltaire - Micro-Phonies This is the album that invented white-guy electro-funk. I've heard it's a favourite album of Prince's, and I can see why. From the very James Brown-influenced grunting and groaning of "Do Right" to the to the dubby hip-hop of "Digital Rasta" to the skanky groove of "Spies In The Wires", there's tons of great music here, but alas, zero industrial content. 6 SPK - Zamia Lehmanni Not industrial, but modern classical. An entire album driven by voice, strings and tape loops is hard to call industrial. "Alocasia Metallica" pulsates with gamelan and eastern percussion with a lone shakuhachi floating over the top, and "Romanz In Mol" is a simple, tumbling piano line underpinned by male choir. Of course, one must mention the centerpiece of the entire SPK catalogue, possibly the best dark ambient piece ever, "In Flagrante Delicto" - haunting simplicity for cello and soprano. 5 D.A.F. - Die Kleinen Und Die Boesen If anything, this album strikes me as an offshoot of disco: way-funky drum tracks, guitar stabs, crazy bleeping synth lines and some Spanish percussion. Just listen to "Co Co Pina" - where's the industrial in that vocal line? Yelping, trilling, grooving. "Nacht Arbeit" also grooves along in a crazed half-German, half-Spanish manner. Fun, fun, fun. 4 Foetus - Nail This is what happens when a man with a crazed sense of humour injects noise and insanity into "normal" forms of American music. "DI-1-9026" is rockabilly, twisted. "Throne Of Agony" is r'n'b...or jazz...i think? And "Descent Into The Inferno" is just what it sounds like it should be - a spiraling, accelerating piece of dementia, set to a swing beat. Great for fucking up people on the dancefloor. 3 Clock DVA - Advantage Fantastically non-industrial by one of The Industrial Bands. Let's see... we've got guitar, bass, drums, horns, female backing vocals...I guess this is where KMFDM got the idea from. No real synths, either. This is like a soundtrack to a non-existent film noir. It's avant-jazz-ish, with lots of songs about people dying. And unlike most other DVA releases, Adi is actually kind of singing. Check "Breakdown" - not only did nine million techno songs sample the first three seconds, but it's just so funky! 2 Front 242 - 05:22:09:12 Off The only reason industrial/EBM EVER caught up to 242 is because they released one non-innovative album, Front By Front (which is probably why it's considered the pinnacle of EBM). And, eight years later, no album has ever been quite like this one. It's not EBM, it's not industrial, it's not even techno. It's somewhere in between and yet ahead of all of them. It opens with "Animal (Cage)", simple ambience, but not very soothing at all. Quite noisy. Then it gets less like 242. "Animal (Gate)" is only three pieces of a song, and it's still intense: a bassline that really rolls, a heavily delayed panning snare, and female vocals, rapping, snipped and chopped up. "Animal (Guide") completes the trilogy in more traditional 242 ground: Jean-Luc makes one of his few appearances on the album for this song, and it's pretty much a standard 242 track. But, then again, we're taken back to untrodden ground. "Modern Angel" is a very harsh technoid EBM piece featuring screaming female vocals, but its chord progression and those operatic vocals hint at beauty under the madness. Then back into the speeding, noisy EBM. And then, closure with pretty little tinkling chimes. and so, the tone for the album is pretty much set: it's all about contrast, with very little transtional space. We then go through industrial trance, thudding hip hop, bumping techno, more ambience, female balladry, and industrial funk-rock. Quick checks: "GenEcide" - cutesy arpeggiating ambience that suddenly turns harsh with bleeps from space and of 99 Kowalski's anger, but, again, more contrast: "let's go swimming in genEcide", sung so prettily. "Crushed" is a teary ballad, and ode to stoicism, replete with swirling synths and backwards percussion that only add to the trippiness. "Happiness (More Angels) is a truly destructive dancefloor track. And at 2:37 into the song, just when you were really grooving, the song sports a break that truly pushes it into the outer reaches. "Speed Angels" is the the pinnacle of the contrast. Smooth, yet dark, strings and opera vox switch on and off with high-bpm breakbeats and harsh bleeps. Highlights? The whole damn album. 1 Einstuerzende Neubauten - Haus der Luege From the moment this album begins, you know it's going to be unusual. "Prolog" is a both a plea from Blixa and a statement on EN's refusal to go corporate, interspersed with blasts of pure noise: "Don't you think that we could sign so just one or two percent to us belong and thousands will follow us along?...wir koennten, aber…" The immediacy of this recording, and what really grabs the ear, are Blixa's extreme vocal concepts. He's fitting verses into rhythms they don't belong to ("Haus Der Luege") or stuttering one syllable at a time ("Hirnlego"), but, of course, this is nothing strange for Blixa. The lyrics are also classic Blixa, which is to say both poetic and meaningful. "Feurio!" is another Neubauten fire song -- but Blixa's thoughts on fire are always excellent, and this one even drags in Roman mythology - and "Haus Der Luege" is easily the greatest song ever written against a Judeo-Christian god. "Ein Stuhl In Der Hoelle" is technically a cover, but as it is a cover of a traditional German kitchen song about the black plague, it fits right in with the rest of the album. This album was less noise-oriented than previous EN efforts, so most fans decried the "softer" Neubauten. While it is not as harsh, a la the slinky post-apocalyptic cabaret of Der Kuss or the tape-collage ambience of "Maifestspiele", the middle piece of the Fiat Lux trilogy, the percussion of this recording is top-notch. Swaying back and forth from intense rhythm to melodic stillness, never losing intelligence and precision, this album represents all that Neubauten are the best at.

This is the first piece for our magazine by Micah Stupak, one of the finest human beings we know. Just don't get him started on electronic music.