For fans of: Electro-Industrial Classics

Following in the wake of the Berlin and London post-punk and industrial music scenes of the early 1980s, the American continent saw its own variation on the form later harnessed by label's like Chicago's Wax Trax! Records. Beyond releasing a body of music that influenced the more commercially successful acts of the 1990s, like Nine Inch Nails and Prodigy, Wax Trax! Records were defined by a then-radical business model. The reactivation of the label, by the daughter of its co-founder Jim Nash, came in the heels of their 2018 documentary, "Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records" and the accompanying anthology. Acting as more than just a retail record store, the environment of the Chicago shop created a cultural locus of related aesthetics, sounds, values and lifestyles. This setting gave birth to the mid-to-late 1980s electro-industrial sounds of Ministry, Meat Beat Manifesto, KMFDM, Front 242, and Controlled Bleeding. Further north, there was an affinity to be had with the concurrent Canadian scene largely released by Nettwerk Records, which issued albums from the influential Vancouver trio, Skinny Puppy, Australia's SPK, and Severed Heads, and Toronto's Front Line Assembly. Stay tuned for more reissues from the Wax Trax! Records back-catalog later in 2021. --(JP)