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Cubanate | |
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Origin | London, England |
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Cubanate are an English industrial band from London, England, founded in 1992 by Marc Heal and Graham Rayner with Phil Barry and Steve Etheridge. The group became well known for their combination of electro-industrial with distorted heavy metal guitars and techno percussion (later incorporating breakbeats).
Cubanate played their first UK tour in November 1992 supporting leftfield UK techno duo Sheep on Drugs. The group signed to Berlin's Dynamica Records shortly afterwards. Rayner and Etheridge departed after the first Machinery single, "Body Burn" (1993). The pair were replaced by Julian Beeston (ex – Nitzer Ebb drummer).
In May 1994, the Metal EP was Single of the Week in Melody Maker magazine and later that year Cubanate received media attention when they were weirdly paired with Carcass for what turned out to be a notoriously violent UK tour ending in death threats to Heal and an on-air confrontation on the Radio One Rock Show with Bruce Dickinson. [1]
The second album Cyberia (1995) spawned the hit single "Oxyacetylene", generally considered Cubanate's creative peak.[ by whom? ] The album peaked at No. 3 on the CMJ RPM Chart in the U.S. [2] For live work around the Cyberia tour the band hired Shep Ashton on guitar and Darren Bennett on keyboards. After 1996, Ashton and Bennett were replaced by Roddy Stone (currently fronting UK metal act Viking Skull) and David Bianchi (who later went on to become manager of rock bands The Enemy and Boy Kill Boy).
The third album, Barbarossa (1996) continued the crossover format, and despite being name-checked as influences by bands such as The Prodigy, [3] the group decided a change was clearly needed.
Signed in the United States to Wax Trax! Recordings for the act's fourth and final official full-length album to date, Interference (1998) was a departure from Cubanate's earlier techno experiments with a strong drum and bass influence that alienated some of their traditionalist fans but was heralded as revelatory by others. [4] The album was co-produced by Rhys Fulber.
In 2004, a torrent appeared on the Internet with nine leaked demo tracks recorded by Heal in 2000 titled Search Engine. Featuring such tracks as "Razor Edge", "Superstructure", and "Drowning Hands" [5] the material had been abandoned by Heal in 2000.
In October 2010, the band announced that they were recording again and would be releasing new material in 2011. A new track titled "We Are Crowd" was released on Alfa-Matrix's compilation EBM1.
In a posting on his Facebook page dated 13 September 2011, Cubanate founder Marc Heal stated: "Marc here. I should have posted this a while back, but I wanted to let everyone know that I have decided conclusively not to do another Cubanate album. It was a real blast getting back into studio with Phil – and he came up with some brilliant music. But I'm doing something different with my life now and I've come to the conclusion to leave it. Thanks for all your support, I really appreciate it. I'll keep posting. M". [6]
Both Heal and Barry have released solo work since that announcement.
On 24 September 2016, Cubanate reformed to play the Cold Waves Festival (an annual industrial music festival held in Chicago, Illinois, United States) with members Marc Heal, Phil Barry and Vince McAley (variously from Dead on TV, GoFight and Die Warzau). The festival lineup included The Cocks (ex-Revolting Cocks members: Richard 23, Luc van Acker, Chris Connelly & Paul Barker), <PIG>, 16Volt, Dead When I Found Her, Bloody Knives, and Kanga, many of whom had previously collaborated with Heal in projects such as Pigface and C-Tec. [7] [8] [ non-primary source needed ]
On 5 May 2017, Cubanate released a compilation album titled Brutalism via Armalyte Industries, featuring 14 remastered songs from Cubanate's first three albums.
On 8 May 2019, Cubanate announced the upcoming release of Kolossus, their first new material since 1998. Kolossus was released on 7 June 2019.
Cubanate has been described often as electro-industrial. [9] AllMusic wrote that the band "have explored the hybrid style created by mixing industrial music with the high-speed rhythms of techno". [10] The band also has included elements of industrial metal in some songs, with vocals similar to the vocals of Lemmy Kilmister of heavy metal band Motörhead.
Title | Year | Notes |
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Antimatter | 1993 | Released in the United States in 1995 (with an alternate track listing) |
Metal | 1994 | EP |
Cyberia | 1995 | |
Barbarossa | 1996 | |
Interference | 1998 | |
Search Engine [3] | 2000 | Unreleased; leaked to Internet circa 2004 |
Brutalism | 2017 | |
Kolossus | 2019 |
Title | Year |
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"Body Burn" | 1993 |
"Oxyacetylene" | 1994 |
"Joy" | 1996 |
"We Are Crowd" | 2011 |
During their heyday, Cubanate's fusion of techno and rock stirred both controversy and influence, with their impact continuing to echo in the present. As one of the rare UK bands labeled 'Industrial' to break into the mainstream, they frequently appeared in a wide range of publications, from Kerrangg! to Melody Maker, where they earned multiple "Single of the Week" honors in each. They also featured on MTV's Headbanger's Ball and shared the stage with notable acts like Front 242, Gary Numan, Rammstein, The Sisters of Mercy, and Front Line Assembly. [11]
"Oxyacetylene" was featured on the 1996 compilation album, Mortal Kombat: More Kombat , and was later used on the soundtrack of the best-selling 1998 PlayStation game Gran Turismo in the NTSC and EU versions. Apart from "Oxyacetylene", three other Cubanate songs were used on Gran Turismo and the single "Body Burn" can be heard at length in episode eighty two of The Sopranos , from the final season of the show. [11]
Electroclash is a genre of popular music that fuses 1980s electro, new wave and synth-pop with 1990s techno, retro-style electropop and electronic dance music. It emerged in the late 1990s and was pioneered by and associated with acts such as I-F, DJ Hell, Miss Kittin and The Hacker, and Fischerspooner.
Electronic body music (EBM) is a genre of electronic music that combines elements of industrial music and synth-punk with elements of dance music. It developed in the early 1980s in Western Europe, as an outgrowth of both the punk and the industrial music cultures. It combines sequenced repetitive basslines, programmed dance music rhythms, and mostly undistorted vocals and command-like shouts with confrontational or provocative themes.
Acumen Nation is an American industrial rock/metal band from Chicago, Illinois.
Raymond Watts is an English musician, the founding and sole member of the industrial music project PIG, sometimes written as <PIG>.
Darker is the debut studio album of C-Tec, released on 1 September 1997 by Synthetic Symphony. The album showcases the band wanting to experiment by integrating different styles and textures into their compositions after the release of their 1995 EP Cyber-Tec. On 5 October 2018 the album was reissued as a music download with an additional track titled "My Unbreakable Code" and written by Marc Heal.
Marc Heal is an English musician, television producer and writer. He is best known as an industrial music artist of the 1990s, noted for mixing metal and techno with more traditional industrial sounds. His extroverted onstage behaviour was unusual in the generally downbeat industrial genre.
Decoded Feedback is a Canadian musical project which incorporates styles of electro-industrial and aggrotech. The duo releases music on the North American distributor Metropolis Records, and the European record label Infacted Recordings.
Hanzel und Gretyl are an American industrial metal band founded in New York City by Kaizer von Loopy and Vas Kallas in February 1993.
Cyberia is a 1995 album by UK-based industrial band Cubanate. The album features one of the band's most well known songs, "Oxyacetylene", which was also included alongside "Skeletal", "Industry" and "Autonomy" in instrumental versions in the video game Gran Turismo.
Antimatter is the 1993 debut album of UK industrial band Cubanate. Notable among the tracks are "Body Burn" which is one of the band's most popular singles, and "Autonomy", which was featured in an instrumental version in the video game Gran Turismo alongside 3 tracks from Cubanate's Cyberia album.
Cobalt 60 was an electro-industrial/EBM group featuring Jean-Luc de Meyer and Dominique Lallement. Cobalt 60 has also done music for the PC game Wing Commander: Prophecy.
Girls Under Glass (GUG) is a musical group from Hamburg, Germany, founded in 1986 by Thomas Lücke, Hauke Harms, and Volker "Zaphor" Zacharias. Described as "an indispensable part of the German wave and gothic scene", GUG began as a gothic rock band, but quickly crossed genre boundaries, incorporating metal and electronic music of various kinds. They have generally been classified as a darkwave act, but have ranged across the goth–industrial "dark music" spectrum, including into industro-metal, and their work has integrated elements of pop, techno, and trip hop. Grenzwellen-News wrote of the band: "Even after 20 years, it is almost impossible to define and pin-down Girls Under Glass stylistically." A review in 2001 concluded that "even in its most experimental phases, the band has never lost its identity".
C-Tec was an EBM band originally formed as a side project in 1995 by Jean-Luc De Meyer, Jonathan Sharp, and Ged Denton. The name was taken from Cyber-Tec Records, who released the band's debut EP. Afterward, Jonathan Sharp left the band, and Marc Heal joined as a full-time member.
Westwon was a dance/rock fusion band formed in 1987 and who supported Gary Numan on the 1987 Exhibition Tour.
Mortal Kombat: More Kombat is a compilation album featuring primarily exclusive music from a number of metal, industrial and electronica bands inspired by the first Mortal Kombat film. It is not an actual soundtrack to the movie, however. Cubanate's "Oxyacetylene" had already been released as a single from their 1994 album Cyberia, and would later be included in instrumental form in the soundtrack for non-Japanese releases of Gran Turismo. Babylon Zoo's "Spaceman" had already been released as a single in 1995. Alien Factory's "Higher" later turned up in the second movie, Mortal Kombat Annihilation, and Juno Reactor's "The Journey Kontinues" was later released under the title "Biot Messiah" on the single "God Is God" (1997). Psykosonik's "It Has Begun" and Sister Machine Gun's "Deeper Down" appeared in the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. Track 16 is exclusive to the cassette release and was taken from the EBN's album Telecommunication Breakdown.
Julian Beeston is an English musician, mainly noted for his time in the electronic groups Nitzer Ebb and Cubanate.
Iron Lung Corp were an American electro-industrial group based in Chicago and originally formed by Jamie Duffy, Alex Eller, Gregory A. Lopez, Brian McGarvey, Daniel Neet, Will Nivens, Ethan Novak and Jason Novak. They released three full length albums: Big Shiny Spears (1997), Ditch the Attitude, Pally (2002), Body Snatchers (2013).
Ania Tarnowska, known professionally as I Ya Toyah, is a Chicago, USA musician, singer, composer, producer, performer, and the founder/CEO of Femme Fatale Records label. Her genre-bending music incorporates elements of multiple genres including industrial, electro-industrial, goth electro, punk electro, electronic rock, and synthwave. It best fits in the alternative music category.
Most chemical engineers can probably tell you what "Oxyacetelyne" is... and so perhaps can Marc Heal, finally returning to the US with Phil Barry and Julian Beeston as CUBANATE