- Odonis Odonis — “Insect”. These guys elevate industrial and punk genre-bending to an almost out-of-body experience. This tracks is so sick, so hard, so absolutely filthy and luscious and steel-tipped and velvet at the same time that I can’t even. (2019)
- Pigface — “Hips Tits Lips Power”. Pigface at their best: animalistic, id-driven, unrepentant. Your bruises from Lesley Rankine’s pummeling assault is a feature, not a bug. (This is actually a mashup of the original with the Britishit Mix version.) (1992)
- My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult — “Burning Dirt”. You will never convince me that MLWTTKK’s “Confessions of a Knife” was not the single best Wax Trax! release of all time. (1990)
- Killing Joke — “Primitive”. This song is a fucking freight train and 40 years later it hasn’t lost a gram of muscle. (1980)
- Soft Kill — “Cry Now Cry Later”. There is a LOT of emotion to unpack in Soft Kill’s “Savior” album, but this track cuts particularly deep. The guitar mourns and pleads as hard as the lyrics, and the relentless bass never allows time to stop the way you wished. (2018)
- The Foreign Resort — “Hearts Fade Out”. How massive are the synth washes in this dancefloor killer? As deep as that rubbery bassline, as incendiary as the guitar, as forlorn as the lyrics, as perfect as those handclaps. Why is everyone not listening to this song all the time? (2019)
- Night Nail — “Hollow Day”. Crooning, wistful post-punk whose backbeat and layered guitar work unloads all kinds of feels. (Also, heads up DJs, it mixes perfectly with “Hearts Fade Out”.) (2018)
- The Stranglers — “Nice N’ Sleazy”. From their third and most excellent 1978 LP, this bass’n’organ workout conveys, quite literally, what these guys were about and why we love them so hard. (1978)
- Depeche Mode — “Suffer Well”. This under-the-radar cut from DM’s last meaningful album is the quintessence of their legacy: emotionally dark, eminently danceable, experimental in its sound design and written ~ just for you ~. (2005)
- Drab Majesty — “Too Soon To Tell”. In 20 years, when much of this decade’s music is rinsed away, Drab Majesty’s second album will retain a featured position in the highlight reel simply for its immediate and inarguable brilliance. (2017)
- Die Krupps — “Machineries Of Joy (Wahre Arbeit Mix)”. Nothing like a splash of pre-90s Die Krupps to remind you that Jürgen and crew (with some help from Nitzer Ebb) were capable of destroying EBM dancefloors long before they paved the way for industrial metal. (1989)
- Blind Delon — “Argent”. A primary example of more modern genre-bending, Blind Delon is synthpop, darkwave and post-punk cocktail that is both danceable and headphone-able. (2017)
- Crash Course In Science — “Cardboard Lamp”. Viciously fun synth punk originally released in 1981 whose grit and off-kilter shuffle-beat feel more relevant than much of the limiter-crushing nonsense of the last few years. (1981)
- Dryft — “End of the In”. A side-project of Gridlock that, for me, was even more vital. Dryft acted as a Hadron Collider of industrial, drum’n’noise, dub, ambient and emotion that shattered hearts and woofers alike. (2000)