Big Black - I Can Be Killed

outlier pick to piss off the purists, Big Black avoided synthesizers like the plague. Yet the Chicago trio’s impact on the genre’s genesis is nothing short of profound. One of the most important underground outfits of the ’80s, Big Black served as the primary viaduct over which synth-punk made the pilgrimage from the ’70s (Chrome, Devo, Suicide) to the ’90s (Six Finger Satellite, Brainiac). Not only that, it was a bridge of ingenious construction, one that revolved around pumping the genre’s principal sound (i.e. greaser rock as performed by hotwired robots) full of hardcore aggression, classic American hard rock and dystopian gloom (formative influences included Cabaret Voltaire, Killing Joke and Neubauten). In addition to opening up synth-punk to new intensities of noise squall (as well as belligerently offensive subject matter), Albini’s use of the Roland TR-606 was downright brilliant, enabling the group to unleash battering-ram beats whose inhuman relentlessness shared more in common with electronic body music and new school hip-hop than anything rock music had produced up to that point in time.