Fashion and music seem to have gone hand and hand with each other over the years, ushering each other’s development to the forefront of popular culture. There’s all manner of subcultures from punk, to goth, to emo, to skater, that was very much influenced by the music you listened to and vice-versa. It used to be about showing support and appreciation for the band you like (I’m sitting in a Killing Joke shirt at the time of writing this for example), which is still the status symbol it embodies today, but nowadays it’s become far more commercialised. Anybody has readily available access to a Ramones, Rolling Stones or Guns ‘N’ Roses t-shirt without ever having heard of their music. I wrote my dissertation based around this subject for my Media Studies degree, and as somebody who recognises their position as a producer and consumer of media content, the change over the decades has become far more poignant to this argument. Thankfully, Fashion Bomb are the right side of cultural consumption, looking and certainly playing the part of an accomplished industrial metal troupe, looking for the next fix of bodies to bludgeon. This five-piece hailing from Chicago evoke the ire of Manson in his industrial youth, but coursing with the intensity of punk, even stretching as far as hardcore’s brightest stars. Every nuance of their musicianship is packed with jagged-edged riffs and melodic hooks that etch themselves deep within your skin and across both their albums, they’ve proved a fierce presence on the industrial underground. 2008’s Devils To Some Angels To Others may share more common traits with a jackhammer, but it’s 2011’s Visions Of The Lifted Veil that elevated those pandemic levels of infectious melodies to their greatest height and yet The Meek is the perfect balance of musical grace and heavyweight destruction. And those destructive credentials are put on display right away. Almost from the get-go, the first wave of pounding metal might bulldozes all those unsuspecting, before the harmonic chorus reminiscent of the timbre of Orgy’s heyday casts piercing light through the brief but bruising beatdown. Each verse is a methodically paced lesson in creeping danger, sensing that the previous teasing of the show of strength can only develop into a longer headkicking, while the voice of the vindictive pours salt into the wounds. The resolute performance of the drums also takes starring role in keeping the soundscape tense in a tribal fashion, but nonetheless exciting. But that’s Fashion Bomb in a nutshell, another exciting, passionate breed of energised industrial metal, poised to declare war on those not compliant. Their fashion may be to walk in the shadows, but they sure hit with the force of a bomb when in plain sight.
Fashion Bomb’s two albums are only be available via most respectable music retailers it seems, but are in the usual social media circles and can be found on Last.fm too. They do have a website as well if checking that out is your bag, but go support them in the relevant method you see fit.
The Soundshark 