Industrial Silence is unusually strong and even for a debut album. This, of course, has to do with the fact that they already had been playing together for six years before its release. It kicks off with the majestic “Vocal,” with its dense and thick guitar sound and singer Sivert Høyem's distinctive crooning on top of it all. What's really impressive on this album, besides the quality of the songs, is guitarist Robert Burås' creative and versatile playing.

Following the dissolution of the Smashing Pumpkins in December 2000 and a brief stint moonlighting with New Order, Billy Corgan quietly put together his first official post-Pumpkins project in late 2001, a quartet known as Zwan. Not surprisingly, Corgan opted to enlist on drums his longtime musical foil and creative spark plug Jimmy Chamberlin, with the other half of the lineup rounded out with guitarist Matt Sweeney (formerly of Chavez and Skunk) and guitarist/bassist David Pajo (formerly of Slint and Tortoise). The group surreptitiously debuted in November 2001 with a series of four small club shows in the Los Angeles/San Diego area, followed by a brief jaunt through the Midwest the following month. Each of these two mini-tours boasted an entirely different set of songs, hinting at the wealth of material that the prolific band had already worked out in their few months together. In April 2002, Zwan morphed into a quintet with the addition of bassist Paz Lenchantin (of A Perfect Circle fame),

The British band Gomez is a five-piece, consisting of Ben Ottewell (vocals, guitar), Tom Gray (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Paul Blackburn (bass, guitar), Olly Peacock (drums), and Ian Ball (vocals, guitar, harmonica). Whereas the majority of up-and-coming British bands are either retro-pop (à la Oasis), trip-hop (Portishead), or space rock (the Verve, Radiohead), Gomez is one of the few to contain bluesy elements in their rock. Their debut for Virgin Records, Bring It On, was praised in the rock press on both sides of the Atlantic. They also received the distinguished Mercury Music Prize for 1998 Album of the Year in England, where they edged out such stiff competition as Massive Attack's Mezzanine and the Verve's Urban Hymns
.........