You can get a decent lesser-status brand guitar like a Cort for $300 or so, and get a multi-effects unit for about $200 that, with a little fiddling, can sound like pretty much any rig you can imagine. Amplification is up to the PA if you can get your effects unit sounding good on headphones.

The word is "Kyriarchy".

It's a sort of remake of the original, aborted line of Kenner Alien toys: http://i.imgur.com/ZYTmQ.jpg

cf "Sprechgesang".

He is now, after all, Snoop Lion.

Huh, I forgot about Author and Punisher. great, but more fun to watch than to listen to, I think.

Interestingly, Depeche Mode claimed their biggest inspiration circa Construction Time Again was Neubauten. You can really hear it in the metallic noises in People Are People.

Just today (inspired by this column) I was listening to Halber Mensch while working, and a coworker asked me if, since my headphones were audible, would I mind playing something less like Lord of the Flies.

I'd say that 1/2 Mensch is their definitive album in terms of presenting their clashy, improvised instrumentation with hooks, although it does have Das Schaben and Der Tod ist Ein Dandy, which would probably test any newbie's patience.

Which makes it much, much funnier.

I love Frail.

Yeah, it's pretty much the best for music.

Butterfly by Haus Arafna is lovely.

Not really stealth.

It really is. I think it's unjustly written off as their "rock" album, but man, some gorgeous sounds in the onslaught. Xnoybis is genuinely beautiful.

I'd say it's an error to assign Swans to any genre, really. They've always been kind of their own thing.

I think that album is perfect for dancing if you are a terrible dancer. No-one would notice you weren't synchronised in any way to the music.

The Greed/Holy Money era of Swans has some tracks which could basically be used as archetypes of Industrial music. Time Is Money (Bastard) and Money Is Flesh are simply perfection.

I lived in South Africa and now live in Australia, and Rammstein had dedicated fanbases there amongst goths and metalheads and associated scenes.

I think Crush My Soul is probably the most "industrial" of Godflesh's tracks.