Dean Tzenos played an accidental joke on himself when he labelled the music on his first Odonis Odonis record, 2011's Hollandaze,"industrial surfgaze." Since then, just about every review comes affixed with the terminally catchy subgenre tag. But even though it's become their albatross, "industrial surfgaze" is also fairly accurate.Their new album Hard Boiled Soft Boiledcordons the two sides of their sound into two distinct segments: the heavy industrial-influencedHard Boiled side and the dreamy, shoegazeySoft Boiled side.
"The whole idea, even from the beginning of the project, was to treat our albums like mixtapes," says Tzenos. "So I actually found one of the original mixtapes that I had when I was a kid. One of the sides was mostly industrial music, and the other one was bands like My Bloody Valentine, Jesus And Mary Chain, New Order, The Stone Roses and all these shoegaze bands that were starting to come up at the time, like Slowdive. I had that in mind with this album. I wanted to do both ends of the spectrum."
The thing is, maybe its hip now, but for most of my life it wasneverhip. It was outsider music.
Here's a peek at how the Chart Attack sausage is made: This pastFebruary, I had the brilliant idea to send Tzenos to interview Skinny Puppy. I was half-joking, but I've rarely seen a musician so simultaneously nervous and excited. It's no joke for him. Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out. So I devised a Plan B: an Odonis Odonis Essential Albums that focuses solely on that "hard boiled" industrial side. And Dean more than obliged, devising a crash course in the genre from its proto-inception to commercial peak and beyond. He also made us an beginner's guide playlist, which you can find at the end.
Dean Tzenos:I dont think Suicide quite knew what they hit on with that first record. But its also influenced a lot by the technology at the time. A lot of the drum machines and samplers were just coming in, so that springboarded everything.This is before what anybody knew what industrial music really was, but they were pioneering the whole thing.
Another big one. I heard it around the same time. Youd always hear that theyre the pioneers of industrial, so I had to check them out. I didnt get what I was listening to, because its actually just machinery noises, which is what industrial music was supposed to be. Theyre sampling actual saws and helicopter sounds. Just crazy shit. Literally industrial.
These are the kind of precursors to industrial music. I think with a lot of genres of music, when you get into hardcore anything, theres these bands that dont quite really know... theres no formula yet so theyre still figuring it out. I feel like all these guys cracked it all open. They're all influences on me, big time.
The Skinny Puppy thing is cool because theyre a Canadian band and theyre one of the first ones I was introduced to. I picked theRemissionrecord because its an easier entrance for people. The band got way darker and harder after that record. ButRemissionis kind of a staple. It feels like a good time to talk about it because theyre even seeing resurgence in that stuff right now. So their newest record sounds like their older '80s material.
[At their Toronto show at Sound Academy in February] they actually played a lot of the record live, which was really cool. They came out halfway through, they didnt have all the makeup and shit, they just came out and hit it old school, 1980s style. That was actually my first time seeing Skinny Puppy. I only heard about their early shows secondhand, because my sister would go. My sister actually got trampled at a Skinny Puppy concert. Shes fine now, but those concerts from what I heard were pretty crazy. By the time I was ready to go, they were about to break up. I tried before that. I got a fake ID and I got busted.
The first industrial record I heard and got into. I was blown away and still am.If you had heardTwitchor anything else like that, you'd hear there was a certain sound that was going on with industrial. But as soon as this record hit, it was a complete game-changer. I dont think anybody had heard something that unhinged and that intense. Even the flow of the record is so chaotic. Hes not afraid to go into completely crazy experimental territory.
Even the way the guitars are used... a lot of industrial doesnt really use that much guitar until the later 80s. Then into the 90s industrialbecomes more metal industrial. Up until that point it wasnt really there. Ministry blew the door open to that. It was also the heaviest thing I had ever heard in my life. I didnt think anything couldbethat heavy.
And then, you cant not mention Nine Inch Nails. Any time you think of industrial, you think of Nine Inch Nails. You cant really deny it.They basically commercialized the whole thing and opened to the door to everything else that came in the '90s, even though at the time (and even Iremember this), to the hardcore industrial fansthey werent really considered legit.There was a lot of backlash.
Then with Trent Reznor touring with Skinny Puppy at that time, [NIN] got booed off the tour because they werent badass enough or because they werent considered real industrial. They were kind of considered a fluff band. But I still think theres so much merit to what he was doing at that time. I actually still really like [Pretty Hate Machine]even though it sounds like an '80s workout record.
[Drummer] Jarod [Gibson] hadnt even heard TheDownward Spiral when he joined the band.I was like "What!? How did you not hear this record?" Some people just miss the boat on industrial stuff, and its kind of weird to go back to it.That wasthe funny part of showing the band [The Downward Spiral], actually. [Drummer] Jarod [Gibson] was literally laughing through most of the record because most of the lyrics are so ridiculous.The lyrics are basically high school level, which was awesome when you were in high school. ButTheDownward Spiral is awesome and seems like its standing the test of time 20 years on. I really think its still a great album.Its still relevant and I can still listen to it and it sounds pretty fresh.
But I feel like from With Teeth on, its been pretty patchy. Ill still listen to it, Im still somewhat of a fan, but its just not there. That new record I could barely get through. Theres two or three songs I thought were pretty good, but its just... I dont know, he has no edge to the music anymore, and a lot of its pretty formulaic.I have tons of respect for that guy though, his work ethic and the way he goes about putting the live show together. Its an awesome show usually, and it still kills.
This is when they start bringing in power techno. They took it to another level. That's kind of when it starts getting into electronica territory, like hard, hard dance. I felt like that segwayed intoProdigyand those kinds of bands.
The thing is, maybe its hip now, but for most of my life it was never hip. It was outsider music. I think thats why there was such a backlash. The Nine Inch Nails thing broke and all of a sudden theres this kind of sacred thing that all the outcast people had, it was eaten up by the mainstream and everyone liked it all of a sudden. It wasnt theirs anymore and thats when it kind of died for me. Theres a huge gap where I completely stopped listening to it. Then it came back around and I was like hey, remember this stuff!
When I started Odonis Odonis, I was busting out all the music in a nostalgic way, but I wanted to do my own take on it. Even though I was such a big fan of it growing up I was never really fully made an industrial record. Thats why I wanted to do the Hard Boiled side, to explore a lot of those elements in those songs for the first time.
Its funny, Ive been hearing a lot of industrial in the hip-hop world. Even in the new M.I.A. record, Kanye West record, Death Grips, they went back to all the stuff I was mentioning, in a new way. The Gesaffelstein record, the new Liars record. Without saying theyre industrial, theyre using the same tools that came out of industrial music.
ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Odonis Odonis bandleader Dean Tzenos leads a crash course in industrial by Richard Trapunski | Chart Attack.
