True, it's more Electro-Industrial. Not techno.
Some of the songs that have been on the radio I didn't mind. Monster is a good jumpy song that reminds me of the Alien Youth era a bit. Hero reminds me too much of Highschool Musical with Jen singing. I can't stand it.
Unfortunately, 'techno' is usually the most the MySpace/Facebook generations or large segments of mainstream listeners (even since the 90s...I've seen 10+ year old references to KMFDM use that term) can articulate about music that prominently features synthesizers. That is, if they aren't calling something 'emo', even though that genre died in the early 90s and sounded nothing like the commercialized industry junk that gets called that now.
I would dispute
Hey You and
Invincible being labeled as any form of 'pop', though (not even Synthpop) -
Hey You was the least Industrial-ish of their electronic output,
Invincible was somewhere in the middle, and I would put
Alien Youth squarely in the Industrial Rock or Industrial Metal category. And calling
Alien Youth 'moderate rock' is just rather funny to me. Seems that anything that isn't metalcore or bland Three Days Grace-ish alt. rock is somehow 'moderate'? What? Especially in light of the fact that I saw a Christianity Today (or some other magazine, I can't remember) article that recommended Skillet, and more specifically
Alien Youth, as an alternative for Marilyn Manson, or maybe even Skinny Puppy. Granted, I laughed at that suggestion back then because it's nothing like either one of those bands*, but it's still a rather long stretch to call that moderate.
*if Skinny Puppy was really in those suggestions, I honestly can't think of what stuff they were thinking of to compare it with, I really can't.
For the record, though, I came in on Invincible (which I still prefer the most of all their stuff), but I knew of the band prior to that, thanks to my cousin spinning their debut album back when it came out. I've not heard that album probably in the 12-13 years since then, but I remember it was even less like the three albums that followed it, or the ones that have followed those. I remember
not liking it then, although I just went and put "Gasoline" on...ah, the nostalgia (it also helps that I developed an appreciation for Post-Grunge in High School, so that has something to do with the favorable impression of it now).
