New Subscriber Playlist: “Even Rivetheads Need Jesus”

Subscribers can listen to an exploration of classic Christian industrial music from the ’80s and ’90s.
Subscriber Playlist 202102

This month’s subscriber playlist is devoted to the music that I loved as a youth group kid growing up in the very middle of the Midwest in the early ’90s: Christian industrial music. Yes, you read that right: Christian industrial music.

That may seem like an oxymoron, given industrial music’s history of employing transgressive themes and brutal sonics to challenge and spit in the face of moral and aesthetic norms. But bands like Mortal, Circle of Dust, and globalWAVEsystem all proved adept at using the genre’s aesthetics to explore more, shall we say, positive themes without succumbing to the kitschiness that so often surrounds Christian art.

This month’s subscriber playlist, titled (rather cheekily, I admit) “Even Rivetheads Need Jesus,” features over 90 minutes of some of my favorite Christian industrial tunes. (Unfortunately, many more are nowhere to be found in Spotify’s vast catalog — which isn’t too surprising given the genre’s relative obscurity.)

Accompanying the playlist is the latest episode of my “Playlist Breakdown” podcast, in which I spotlight one of the playlist’s songs and why it’s so special and meaningful. In this episode, I talk about “Mytho-X,” the popular single from Mortal’s 1992 debut album, Lusis.

Both of these are little bonuses for subscribers who support Opus financially. If you’d like to get access to them (and more), subscribe to Opus for $5/month or $50/year. (Also, if you just want to check it out, you can subscribe for free and get weekend reading recommendations.)

Original image by Jesse Bridgewater.

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