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Cubanate are an English industrial music band from London, England, founded in 1992 by Marc Heal and Graham Rayner with Phil Barry and Steve Etheridge. The group became well known for their combination of electro-industrial with distorted heavy metal guitars and techno music percussion (later incorporating ).
In early 1994, the band released the Metal EP which featured two new songs ("Angeldust" and "Metal") plus a few Antimatter remixes. In May of that year, the Metal EP was Single of the Week in Melody Maker magazine. Later that year, Cubanate received media attention when they were paired with Carcass for what turned out to be a notoriously violent UK tour ending in death threats to Heal. There was also an on-air confrontation on the Radio One Rock Show with Bruce Dickinson. In 1995, Antimatter was belatedly released in the US with an altered tracklisting.
The second album Cyberia (1995) spawned the hit single "Oxyacetylene". The album peaked at 3 on the CMJ RPM Chart in the U.S. For live work around the Cyberia tour the band hired Shep Ashton on guitar and Darren Bennett on keyboards. After 1996, Ashton and Bennett were replaced by Roddy Stone (currently fronting UK metal act Viking Skull) and David Bianchi (who later went on to become manager of rock bands The Enemy and Boy Kill Boy).
The third album, Barbarossa (1996) continued the crossover format, and despite being name-checked as influences by bands such as The Prodigy, the group decided a change was clearly needed.
Signed in the United States to Wax Trax! Recordings for the act's fourth and final official album to date, Interference (1998) was a departure from Cubanate's earlier techno experiments with a strong drum and bass influence that alienated some of their traditionalist fans, but was heralded as revelatory by others. The album was co-produced by Rhys Fulber.
In October 2010, the band announced that they were recording again and would be releasing new material in 2011. A new track titled "We Are Crowd" was released on Alfa-Matrix's compilation EBM1.
In a posting on his Facebook page dated 13 September 2011, Cubanate founder Marc Heal stated: "Marc here. I should have posted this a while back, but I wanted to let everyone know that I have decided conclusively not to do another Cubanate album. It was a real blast getting back into studio with Phil – and he came up with some brilliant music. But I'm doing something different with my life now and I've come to the conclusion to leave it. Thanks for all your support, I really appreciate it. I'll keep posting. M".[1]
Both Heal and Barry have released solo work since that announcement.
On 5 May 2017, Cubanate released a compilation album titled Brutalism via Armalyte Industries, featuring 14 remastered songs from Cubanate's first three albums.
In 2019, Cubanate released Kolossus, their first new material since 1998.
During their heyday, Cubanate's fusion of techno and rock stirred both controversy and influence, with their impact continuing to echo in the present. As one of the rare UK bands labeled 'Industrial' to break into the mainstream, they frequently appeared in a wide range of publications, from Kerrangg! to Melody Maker, where they earned multiple "Single of the Week" honors in each. They also featured on MTV's Headbanger's Ball and shared the stage with notable acts like Front 242, Gary Numan, Rammstein, The Sisters of Mercy, and Front Line Assembly.
"Oxyacetylene" was featured on the 1996 compilation album, , and was later used on the soundtrack of the best-selling 1998 PlayStation game Gran Turismo in the NTSC and EU versions. Apart from "Oxyacetylene", three other Cubanate songs were used on Gran Turismo and the single "Body Burn" can be heard at length in episode eighty-two of The Sopranos, from the final season of the show.
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