Industrial music has always been a genre that I found most appealing as a concept, but in execution rarely anything but disappointing. I love the idea of musicians exacerbating the cultural fault line that lies between humanity and machinery. I love the idea that because my Grandma has a hip replacement she's not so very far from being classed a "Terminator"- type cyborgian entity.

I'll also readily admit to losing it wholesale while listening to "Persuasion" from Throbbing Gristle's Twenty Jazz Funk Greats (as well as the chilling Billy Ray Martin version). Genesis P. Orridge and his mates consistently managed a superb melding of a punk DIY mentality and a dystopian vision of a post- Ballardian industrial state of mind. The concept of human beings assimilating mechanical properties is so cool it makes me want to bonk a car crash victim.

That particular socially disdained ardor, however, is always dampened when I listen to recent industrial releases, and certainly whenever I subject myself to Hate Dept's Technical Difficulties. Imagine Backstreet Boys blindsided by mechanical malaise and self- righteous self- loathing; that's how far away from The Atrocity Exhibition this record is. For crying out loud, any so- called industrial band who sings "I know it's not cool to want me" (from "Wait") is asking for trouble, but when they also orchestrate the song with chiming George Winston pianos and a muted Miles-ish trumpet, they're asking for a severe asskicking. 1,000 Homo DJs these guys ain't!

You expect "Hit Back" to be a welter of piledriving beats and an 8.9 Richter scale tremor of earthquaking noise; instead the lads in Hate Dept have borrowed 2 Unlimited's drum machine and Sigue Sigue Sputnik's tinny guitars. Woeful doesn't even remotely approximate the vacuity that this band proudly displays. "Fireflies" is like dad- rock veteran Paul Weller getting handy with his inner automaton. But most tedious of all, "Leaving" finds the band in confessional Jewel mode rather than the Depeche Mode they were probably aiming for. At least the feeble British industrial upstarts Vitro decided that meshing techno beats and Oasis would be more profitable.

This reocrd joins the brief list of things-- like morris dancing and incest-- that you don't need to expose yourself to. To be sure, Technical Difficulties aren't all the problems that this band has.

-Paul Cooper