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Subtext

  Usually when the topic of cyberpunk music comes up, everyone just reflexively names all their favorite industrial and occasional metal or goth bands. They're missing the point. Music, in and of itself, is not generally cyberpunk. The message behind it, usually in the lyrics, sometimes in the subtext as in Metal Machine Music, can be.

Queensryche [EMI]

Rage For Order

Operation: Mindcrime

A lot of songs on their other albums (especially NM-156 on _The Warning_) are also about the information age or other cyberpunk themes, but these are nothing but.

Pop Will Eat Itself

The Looks or the Lifestyle

This is the Day, This is the Hour, This is This

The Cure For Sanity

Dos Dedos Mi Amigos

Focused on high-tech life, cyberpunk, very nihilistic, very cynical and occasionally political, and very media-soaked.

Idol, Billy

Cyberpunk

Okay, Billy's a cheezy schmuck personally, but it's still good music and the lyrics are good cyberpunk themes.

Information Society

Peace & Love, Inc.

"Where would I be without my P.C.?
Where would I be without MTV?
Where would I be without CNN?
Where would I be without IBM?"
Much of the album is focused on computers and corporate life, and even a bit of identity questioning.

Disposable Heroes of Hip-Hopracy

"Television, The Drug Of The Nation"

Corrosion of Conformity

Very political, especially songs like "Technocracy" and "Vote With A Bullet".

Tree

Heavy political message about our media-soaked culture and the loss of our sense of America.

Headcrash

Political hard rock, not very good musically, but the lyrics are worth it.

Battery [Cop Int'l]

Lilith 3.2

"It's all just electrons, it's about who controls the information!"
The Bride of Frankenstein in 4 tracks of sample-heavy techno.
Be sure to also pick up anything else on the 21st Circuitry, Cop International, and Cleopatra labels, they pump out a TON of dark or hard techno-industrial, often with a very heavy high-tech or political message.

Deathline Int'l [Cop Int'l]

Also brilliant hard-edged cyberpunk-themed sample-heavy techno.

Psykosonik

Also heavily focused on computers and revolution.

Fiedel, Brad

Terminator

Terminator II

I've always imagined that this is what the Killing Floor sounded like, taken literally.

Reed, Lou

Metal Machine Music [Industrial Records]

Yankovik, "Weird Al"

Bad Hair Day

"Consolidated Incorporated" is the theme song of the four companies that publish 99% of the music heard by 99.999% of the public.

Machines of Loving Grace

"Terminal City", "Golgotha Tenament Blues", and "Richest Junkie Still Alive", for instance (and many others). Dark industrial.

Negativland

Media collage and sound hacking, with serious underlying messages in some tracks (I'm still trying to find the deep meaning in "Car Bomb").

Cassandra Complex

The Cyberpunk album is not bad at all, and quite accurately named, it hits some important points. CC is also famous for the song "Moscow, Idaho". Well, at least it is among DJs in Moscow, ID, and hey, we're the ones who matter.

Styx

Kilroy Was Here

"Machines to rule our lives, machines dehumanize" -"Mr.Roboto"
Kilroy is the album "Mr.Roboto" comes from, but it's a lot more than just that one song - the album is about popular rebellion against the religious right and the misuse of technology to dehumanize rather than improve humanity (in this case, fighting for rock 'n roll, but it applies just as much to freedom of speech and information as it does to self-expression).

Nixon, Mojo

"Burn Down The Malls"

Sucking Chest Wound

God Family Country

Producers For Bob

Chris Burke

Oil War