Perhaps ironically for a genre that broke from decades of rockist traditions to deliver dire technoid broadcasts of a dystopian future (that we’re now living in, thanks?), industrial music is having a big nostalgic moment.
You’ve got Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Front 242, Frontline Assembly and lately Skinny Puppy all reformed and hitting the road again. One of the few prominent figures from that 1990s electro-industrial boom who is having it both ways — revising the past without getting mired in the quicksand of throwback sentimentality — is Paul Barker.
Barker, the former close collaborator of Ministry’s Al Jourgensen (the Pan to his Luxa), was a driving force in game-changing industrial projects like Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pigface, Pailhead, PTP and Lard. After 18 years working with Jourgensen, Barker severed ties, preferring to resurrect (at last) his Lead Into Gold vehicle.
LIG originally released an album and two singles’ worth of biomechanical warfare as the 1980s faded into the ’90s before going dormant. Now they’re back with a vengeance, issuing new singles and this year’s The Eternal Present. It’s a welcome return to form: gleaming industrial-metal stripped of goofy rock (and nu-metal) excess with an elegantly suited Barker leading on bass (the man knows his way around an unforgettable bassline) and vocals.
Barker steers Lead Into Gold to Will’s Pub on a night off from the Skinny Puppy reunion tour he’s opening to play a headliner at Will’s Pub Wednesday.
Opening the evening are Tampa’s Aeon Rings and, happily, Bacon Grease from Orlando. Bacon Grease’s Andrea Knight opened for Martin Atkins pre-pandemic, and she has much in common with Barker’s unerring sense of rhythm and propulsion. See some rare intergenerational harmony.
8 p.m., Will’s Pub, 1042 N. Mills Ave., willspub.org, $15.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Related Stories
Music festivals, markets and more Earth Day events in Orlando
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2023.