The Young Gods

In a genre sometimes as rigidly standardized and predictable as an assembly line job, the Young Gods have managed to set themselves apart with each release. Few bands of their sort would have the temerity to produce an entire album of industrialized Kurt Weill covers, and fewer still would venture a twenty minute Ambient/Metal overhaul of the Doors' "L.A. Woman" (check out "Summer Eyes" on 1991's T.V. Sky). The Young Gods have pulled off both these stunts with unusual cunning. On early releases, vocalist Franz Treichler shifts effortlessly from French to German to English. On more recent efforts he sticks to English, sounding curiously like an android hard-wired with Jim Morrison's sound and fury. Though their first recordings appeared in the late '80s, the Young Gods still figure among the Industrial genre's foremost avant-garde figures.