Industrial music is a genre of experimental
music which draws on harsh, transgressive
or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic
defines industrial music as the "most abrasive
and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic
music"; "initially a blend of avant-garde
electronics experiments (tape music, musique
concrète, white noise, synthesizers, sequencers,
etc.) and punk provocation". The term was
coined in the mid-1970s with the founding
of Industrial Records by members of Throbbing
Gristle and Monte Cazazza. While the genre
name originated with Throbbing Gristle's emergence
in the United Kingdom, concentrations of artists
and labels vital to the genre also emerged
in Chicago.
The first industrial artists experimented
with noise and aesthetically controversial
topics, musically and visually, such as fascism,
sexual perversion, and the occult. Prominent
industrial musicians include Throbbing Gristle,
Monte Cazazza, SPK, Boyd Rice, Cabaret Voltaire,
and Z'EV. On Throbbing Gristle's debut album
The Second Annual Report, they coined the
slogan "industrial music for industrial people".
Chicago-based independent label Wax Trax Records
featured a heavy roster of industrial music
acts. The precursors that influenced the development
of the genre included acts such as electronic
music group Kraftwerk, experimental rock acts
such as Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa, psychedelic
rock artists such as Jimi Hendrix, and composers
such as John Cage. Musicians also cite writers
such as William S. Burroughs, and philosophers
such as Friedrich Nietzsche as influences.
While the term was self-applied by a small
coterie of groups and individuals associated
with Industrial Records in the late 1970s,
it was broadened to include artists influenced
by the original movement or using an "industrial"
aesthetic. A few years later in the 1980s,
artists on Chicago-based Wax Trax Records
such as Front 242, KMFDM, Front Line Assembly,
Ministry, and Sister Machine Gun gained prominence
on the industrial music scene. Over time,
the genre's influence spread into and blended
with styles including ambient and rock, all
of which now fall under the post-industrial
music label. Electro-industrial music is a
primary subgenre that developed in the 1980s.
The two other most notable hybrid genres are
industrial rock and industrial metal, which
include bands such as Nine Inch Nails and
Ministry, both of which released platinum-selling
albums in the 1990s. These distinct genres
are often referred to as simply industrial.
== History ==
=== 
Precursors ===
Industrial music drew from a broad range of
predecessors. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary, the genre was first named in 1942
when The Musical Quarterly called Dmitri Shostakovich's
1927 Symphony No. 2 "the high tide of 'industrial
music'." Similarly, in 1972 The New York Times
described works by Ferde Grofé (especially
1935's A Symphony in Steel) as a part of "his
'industrial music' genre [that] called on
such instruments as four pairs of shoes, two
brooms, a locomotive bell, a pneumatric drill
and a compressed-air tank". Though these compositions
are not directly tied to what the genre would
become, they are early examples of music designed
to mimic machinery noise and factory atmosphere.
In his book Interrogation Machine: Laibach
and NSK, Alexei Monroe argues that Kraftwerk
were particularly significant in the development
of industrial music, as the "first successful
artists to incorporate representations of
industrial sounds into nonacademic electronic
music." Industrial music was created originally
by using mechanical and electric machinery,
and later advanced synthesizers, samplers
and electronic percussion as the technology
developed. Monroe also argues for Suicide
as an influential contemporary of the industrial
musicians. Groups cited as inspirational by
the founders of industrial music include The
Velvet Underground, Joy Division, and Martin
Denny. Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle
had a cassette library including recordings
by the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Kraftwerk,
Charles Manson, and William S. Burroughs.
P-Orridge also credited 1960s rock such as
The Doors, Pearls Before Swine, The Fugs,
Captain Beefheart, and Frank Zappa in a 1979
interview.Chris Carter also enjoyed and found
inspiration in Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream.
Boyd Rice was influenced by the music of '60s
girl groups and tiki culture. Z'EV cited Christopher
Tree (Spontaneous Sound), John Coltrane, Miles
Davis, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, and Captain
Beefheart, among others together with Tibetan,
Balinese, Javanese, Indian, and African music
as influential in his artistic life. Cabaret
Voltaire cited Roxy Music as their initial
forerunners, as well as Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe
Express. Cabaret Voltaire also recorded pieces
reminiscent of musique concrète and composers
such as Morton Subotnick. Nurse with Wound
cited a long list of obscure free improvisation
and Krautrock as recommended listening. 23
Skidoo borrowed from Fela Kuti and Miles Davis's
On the Corner. Many industrial groups, including
Einstürzende Neubauten, took inspiration
from world music.Many of the initial industrial
musicians preferred to cite artists or thinkers,
rather than musicians, as their inspiration.
Simon Reynolds declares that "Being a Throbbing
Gristle fan was like enrolling in a university
course of cultural extremism." John Cage was
an initial inspiration for Throbbing Gristle.
SPK appreciated Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp,
Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Walter
Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche,
and Gilles Deleuze. Cabaret Voltaire took
conceptual cues from Burroughs, J. G. Ballard,
and Tristan Tzara. Whitehouse and Nurse with
Wound dedicated some of their work to the
Marquis de Sade; the latter also took impetus
from the Comte de Lautréamont.Another influence
on the industrial aesthetic was Lou Reed's
Metal Machine Music. Pitchfork Music cites
this album as "inspiring, in part, much of
the contemporary avant-garde music scene—noise,
in particular." The album consists entirely
of guitar feedback, anticipating industrial's
use of non-musical sounds.
=== Industrial Records ===
Industrial Music for Industrial People was
originally coined by Monte Cazazza as the
strapline for the record label Industrial
Records, founded by British art-provocateurs
Throbbing Gristle. The first wave of this
music appeared with Throbbing Gristle, from
London; Cabaret Voltaire, from Sheffield;
and Boyd Rice (recording under the name NON),
from the United States. Throbbing Gristle
first performed in 1976, and began as the
musical offshoot of the Kingston upon Hull-based
COUM Transmissions. COUM was initially a psychedelic
rock group, but began to describe their work
as performance art in order to obtain grants
from the Arts Council of Great Britain. COUM
was composed of P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni
Tutti. Beginning in 1972, COUM staged several
performances inspired by Fluxus and Viennese
Actionism. These included various acts of
sexual and physical abjection. Peter Christopherson,
an employee of commercial artists Hipgnosis,
joined the group in 1974, with Carter joining
the following year.The group renamed itself
Throbbing Gristle in September 1975, their
name coming from a northern English slang
word for an erection. The group's first public
performance, in October 1976, was alongside
an exhibit titled Prostitution, which included
pornographic photos of Tutti as well as used
tampons. Conservative politician Nicholas
Fairbairn declared that "public money is being
wasted here to destroy the morality of our
society" and blasted the group as "wreckers
of civilization." The group announced their
dissolution in 1981, declaring that their
"mission" has been "terminated."
=== Wax Trax! Records ===
Chicago record label Wax Trax! Records was
prominent in the widespread attention industrial
music received starting in the early 1980s.
The label was started by Jim Nash and Dannie
Flesher. The label's first official release
was an EP in 1980 entitled Immediate Action
by Strike Under. The label went on to distribute
some of the most prominent names in industrial
throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Wax Trax!
also distributed industrial releases in the
United States for the Belgium record label
Play It Again Sam Records, and had opened
a North American office dubbed Play It Again
Sam U.S.A. as a division of Wax Trax!. Wax
Trax! was subsequently purchased by TVT Records
in 1992. When TVT closed its doors in 2001,
Wax Trax! re-emerged under a different name,
WTII Records (Wax Trax 2 Records), releasing
industrial and other forms of electronic music.
=== Expansion of the scene ===
The bands Clock DVA, Nocturnal Emissions,
Whitehouse, Nurse with Wound, and SPK soon
followed. Whitehouse intended to play "the
most brutal and extreme music of all time",
a style they eventually called power electronics.
An early collaborator with Whitehouse, Steve
Stapleton, formed Nurse with Wound, who experimented
with noise sculpture and sound collage. Clock
DVA described their goal as borrowing equally
from surrealist automatism and "nervous energy
sort of funk stuff, body music that flinches
you and makes you move." 23 Skidoo, like Clock
DVA, merged industrial music with African-American
dance music, but also performed a response
to world music. Performing at the first WOMAD
Festival in 1982, the group likened themselves
to Indonesian gamelan. Swedish act Leather
Nun, were signed to Industrial Records in
1978, being the first non-TG/Cazazza act to
have an IR-release. Their singles eventually
received significant airplay in the United
States on college radio.
Across the Atlantic, similar experiments were
taking place. In San Francisco, performance
artist Monte Cazazza began recording noise
music. Boyd Rice released several albums of
noise, with guitar drones and tape loops creating
a cacophony of repetitive sounds. In Boston
Sleep Chamber and other artists from Inner-X-Musick
began experimenting with a mixture of powerful
noise and early forms of EBM. In Italy, work
by Maurizio Bianchi at the beginning of the
1980s also shared this aesthetic. In Germany,
Einstürzende Neubauten mixed metal percussion,
guitars, and unconventional instruments (such
as jackhammers and bones) in stage performances
that often damaged the venues in which they
played. Blixa Bargeld, inspired by Antonin
Artaud and an enthusiasm for amphetamines,
also originated an art movement called Die
Genialen Dilettanten. Bargeld is particularly
well known for his hissing scream.In January
1984, Einstürzende Neubauten performed a
Concerto for Voice and Machinery at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts (the same site as COUM's
Prostitution exhibition), drilling through
the floor and eventually sparking a riot.
This event received front page news coverage
in England. Other groups who practiced a form
of industrial "metal music" (that is, produced
by the sounds of metal crashing against metal)
include Test Dept, Laibach, and Die Krupps,
as well as Z'EV and SPK. Test Dept were largely
inspired by Russian Futurism and toured to
support the 1984-85 UK miners' strike. Skinny
Puppy embraced a variety of industrial forefathers
and created a lurching, impalatable whole
from many pieces. Swans, from New York City,
also practiced a metal music aesthetic, though
reliant on standard rock instrumentation.
Laibach, a Slovenian group who began while
Yugoslavia remained a single state, were very
controversial for their iconographic borrowings
from Stalinist, Nazi, Titoist, Dada, and Russian
Futurist imagery, conflating Yugoslav patriotism
with its German authoritarian adversary. Slavoj
Žižek has defended Laibach, arguing that
they and their associated Neue Slowenische
Kunst art group practice an overidentification
with the hidden perverse enjoyment undergirding
authority that produces a subversive and liberatory
effect. In simpler language, Laibach practiced
a type of agitprop that was widely utilized
by industrial and punk artists on both sides
of the atlantic.
Following the breakup of Throbbing Gristle,
P-Orridge and Christopherson founded Psychic
TV and signed to a major label. Their first
album was much more accessible and melodic
than the usual industrial style, and included
hired work by trained musicians. Later work
returned to the sound collage and noise elements
of earlier industrial. They also borrowed
from funk and disco. P-Orridge also founded
Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, a quasi-religious
organization that produced video art. Psychic
TV's commercial aspirations were managed by
Stevo of Some Bizzare records, who released
many of the later industrial musicians, including
Eistürzende Neubauten, Test Dept, and Cabaret
Voltaire.Cabaret Voltaire had become friends
with New Order, and began to practice a similar
form of danceable electropop. Christopherson
left Psychic TV in 1983 and formed Coil with
John Balance. Coil made use of gongs and bullroarers
in an attempt to conjur "Martian," "homosexual
energy". David Tibet, a friend of Coil's,
formed Current 93; both groups were inspired
by amphetamines and LSD. J. G. Thirlwell,
a co-producer with Coil, developed a version
of black comedy in industrial music, borrowing
from lounge as well as noise and film music.
In the early 1980s, the Chicago-based record
label Wax Trax! and Canada's Nettwerk helped
to expand the industrial music genre into
the more accessible electro-industrial and
industrial rock genres.
== Characteristics and history ==
The birth of industrial music was a response
to "an age [in which] the access and control
of information were becoming the primary tools
of power." At its birth, the genre of industrial
music was different from any other music,
and its use of technology and disturbing lyrics
and themes to tear apart preconceptions about
the necessary rules of musical form supports
the suggestion that industrial music is modernist
music. The artists themselves made these goals
explicit, even drawing connections to social
changes they wished to argue for through their
music.
The Industrial Records website explains that
the musicians wanted to re-invent rock music,
and that their uncensored records were about
their relationship with the world. They go
on to say that they wanted their music to
be an awakening for listeners so that they
would begin to think for themselves and question
the world around them. Industrial Records
intended the term industrial to evoke the
idea of music created for a new generation,
with previous music being more agricultural:
P-Orridge stated that "there's an irony in
the word 'industrial' because there's the
music industry. And then there's the joke
we often used to make in interviews about
churning out our records like motorcars —that
sense of industrial. And ... up till then
the music had been kind of based on the blues
and slavery, and we thought it was time to
update it to at least Victorian times—you
know, the Industrial Revolution".
Early industrial music often featured tape
editing, stark percussion and loops distorted
to the point where they had degraded to harsh
noise, such as the work of early industrial
group Cabaret Voltaire, which Journalist Simon
Reynolds described as characterized by "hissing
high hats and squelchy snares of rhythm-generator."
Carter of Throbbing Gristle invented a device
named the "Gristle-izer", played by Christopherson,
which comprised a one-octave keyboard and
a number of cassette machines triggering various
pre-recorded sounds.Traditional instruments
were often played in nontraditional or highly
modified ways. Reynolds described the Cabaret
Voltaire members' individual contributions
as "[Chris] Watson's smears of synth slime;
[Stephen] Mallinder's dankly pulsing bass;
and [Richard H.] Kirk's spikes of shattered-glass
guitar." Watson custom-built a fuzzbox for
Kirk's guitar, producing a unique timbre.
Carter built speakers, effects units, and
synthesizer modules, as well as modifying
more conventional rock instrumentation, for
Throbbing Gristle. Tutti played guitar with
a slide in order to produce glissandi, or
pounded the strings as if it were a percussion
instrument. Throbbing Gristle also played
at very high volume and produced ultra-high
and sub-bass frequencies in an attempt to
produce physical effects, naming this approach
as "metabolic music."Vocals were sporadic,
and were as likely to be bubblegum pop as
they were to be abrasive polemics. Cabaret
Voltaire's Stephen Mallinder's vocals were
electronically treated.The purpose of industrial
music initially was to serve as a commentary
on modern society by eschewing what artists
saw as trite connections to the past. Throbbing
Gristle opposed the elements of traditional
rock music remaining in the punk rock scene,
declaring industrial to be "anti-music." Early
industrial performances often involved taboo-breaking,
provocative elements, such as mutilation,
sado-masochistic elements and totalitarian
imagery or symbolism, as well as forms of
audience abuse, such as Throbbing Gristle's
aiming high powered lights at the audience.Industrial
groups typically focus on transgressive subject
matter. In his introduction for the Industrial
Culture Handbook (1983), Jon Savage considered
some hallmarks of industrial music to be organizational
autonomy, shock tactics, and the use of synthesizers
and "anti-music." Furthermore, an interest
in the investigation of "cults, wars, psychological
techniques of persuasion, unusual murders
(especially by children and psychopaths),
forensic pathology, venereology, concentration
camp behavior, the history of uniforms and
insignia" and Aleister Crowley's magick was
present in Throbbing Gristle's work, as well
as in other industrial pioneers. Burroughs's
recordings and writings were particularly
influential on the scene, particularly his
interest in the cut-up technique and noise
as a method of disrupting societal control.
Many of the first industrial musicians were
interested in, though not necessarily sympathetic
with, fascism. Throbbing Gristle's logo was
based on the lightning symbol of the British
Union of Fascists, while the Industrial Records
logo was a photo of Auschwitz.
=== Expansion and post-industrial (late 1980s
and early 1990s) ===
In the late 1980s, a number of additional
styles developed from the already eclectic
base of industrial music. These offshoots
include fusions with noise music, ambient
music, folk music, post-punk and electronic
dance music, as well as other mutations and
developments. The scene has spread worldwide,
and is particularly well represented in North
America, Europe, and Japan. Post-industrial
subgenres include dark ambient, power electronics,
Japanoise, neofolk, electro-industrial, electronic
body music, industrial hip hop, industrial
rock, industrial metal, industrial pop, martial
industrial, power noise, and witch house.
=== Mainstream success (1990s and 2000s) ===
In the 1990s, industrial music broke into
the mainstream with artists and bands such
as Nine Inch Nails, Orgy, White Zombie, Rob
Zombie, and Marilyn Manson. In December 1992,
Nine Inch Nails' EP Broken was certified platinum
by the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA). Nine Inch Nails gained further popularity
with the release of their album The Downward
Spiral, an album released in 1994. The Downward
Spiral sold almost 119,000 units in its first
week of being released. The Downward Spiral
was certified 4x platinum by the RIAA in 1998.
Nine inch Nails' remix album Further Down
the Spiral, released in May 1995, was certified
gold by the RIAA in June 1996. Nine Inch Nails'
1999 album The Fragile went to number 1 on
the Billboard 200 on October 9, 1999 and also
was certified 2x platinum in January 2000.
With the success of Nine Inch Nails, the band's
debut album Pretty Hate Machine was certified
2x platinum by the RIAA in September 1995
and also was later certified 3x platinum by
the RIAA in May 2003. In the 1990s, four Nine
Inch Nails songs went on the Billboard Hot
100. Several industrial rock and industrial
metal artists such as KMFDM, Fear Factory,
Gravity Kills and Sister Machine Gun appeared
on the 1995 Mortal Kombat: Original Motion
Picture Soundtrack. The soundtrack was certified
platinum by the RIAA in January 1996.
Marilyn Manson released its album Antichrist
Superstar in 1996. Antichrist Superstar sold
132,000 in its first of being released. Antichrist
Superstar was certified platinum by the RIAA
two months after its release date. In the
United States, Antichrist Superstar sold at
least 1,900,000 units. Marilyn Manson's EP
Smells Like Children was certified platinum
in May 1998. Marilyn Manson's album Mechanical
Animals went to number 1, selling 223,000
copies in its first week in stores, knocking
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn
Hill off of the top spot. Mechanical Animals
was certified platinum by the RIAA in February
1999 and sold at least 1,409,000 copies in
the United States. Orgy also experienced mainstream
success during the 1990s. The band's 1998
album Candyass was certified platinum by the
RIAA in July 1999. Orgy's cover of New Order's
song "Blue Monday" went to number 56 on the
Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 on the Dance
Club Songs chart. White Zombie experimented
with industrial metal on its 1995 album Astro-Creep
2000, which was certified 2x platinum by the
RIAA in March 1996. White Zombie's vocalist
Rob Zombie began creating pure industrial
metal albums in his solo career. Rob Zombie's
solo debut studio album Hellbilly Deluxe was
certified 3x platinum by the RIAA less than
two years after its release date. In November
1999, Powerman 5000's album Tonight the Stars
Revolt! was certified platinum by the RIAA.
The album sold at least 1,316,172 units in
the United States. Although the popularity
of industrial music overall declined in the
2000s, both Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson
continued to be popular during the 2000s.
Nine Inch Nails' 2005 album With Teeth went
to number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling
272,000 copies in its first week of being
released. As of October 2007, With Teeth has
sold 1,100,000 copies in the United States.
During the 2000s, four Nine Inch Nails were
on the Billboard Hot 100, including the Nine
Inch Nails song "The Hand That Feeds", which
went to the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100,
going to number 31 on the chart. Marilyn Manson's
2003 album The Golden Age of Grotesque went
to number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling
118,000 copies in its first week of being
released.
== See also ==
Cassette culture
Rivethead
Steampunk
Experimental music
List of industrial music festivals
List of industrial music bands
List of electronic music festivals
List of gothic festivals
== Footnotes
