Salutations! Welcome to the second installment of the /c/music mega. Please check out the week’s theme, comment with your favorites of the genre, or any music-related thoughts you’ve been having!

This week's theme: Industrial music

What is industrial music?

Industrial music has a focus on noisy and harsh sonic textures, often using clangorous percussive sounds, broken and found instruments, tape manipulation, synthesizers, and samplers. Thematically, the music often explores alienation, urban decay, horror, radical politics, and trauma. It first emerged in the late 1970’s, influenced primarily by early, experimental electronic music, musique concrète, and punk. I once heard it wryly put that industrial music was started by punks who thought there was too much music in punk; despite punk’s aesthetics and attitude of breaking down norms and challenging assumptions, the music itself sticks largely to traditional three-chord rock harmonies, even if play loud and sloppy. So industrial takes up the punk ethos, but uses more of the dissonant and atonal elements of experimental electronic music and musique concrète.

As this is a nearly fifty year-old genre built around experimentation, at this point industrial is more an umbrella of sub-genres than a singular genre. Below are some of the more important and noteworthy types of industrial, with examples. A couple caveats: as the lines between sub-genres can be murky, some of these pieces could arguably fit in multiple sub-genres, and I’m not covering every single niche, so don’t treat this as exhaustive.

Original/”True” Industrial

The early days of industrial were harsher, less approachable, and more varied, as the genre was still in its primordial phase. However, the most influential and defining band out of this era was Throbbing Gristle. Formed as the musical component of the COUM Transmission art collective, their stage presence was just as abrasive as their sound, bringing the condemnation of Tory politicians. Their self-published record label, Industrial Records, is where the genre got its name from. Their heavy use of sound-mangling effects (especially their DIY-made Gristleizer), synths, and instruments played unconventionally, set the tone of the genre going forward. Not surprisingly, several of the members defied sexual norms; leader singer Genesis P-Orridge came out as trans, synth and electronics player Peter Christopherson was gay, and guitarist Cosey Fanni Tutti also worked as an adult actress.

Some fans consider only the music from the late 70’s to early 80’s as industrial, and everything in the genre after that as post-industrial. This makes a certain sense from an academic standpoint, but practically speaking that’s not how most people talk about the genre.

Examples:

Martial Industrial

As the name implies, martial industrial features militaristic elements, often as a satirization of fascism and strong arm man states. This sub-genre was invented by the Slovenian band Laibach, who have explored an immensely wide array of sounds and genres, always with tongue in cheek, but it’s their early work that established the style. Also, they played a concert in North Korea, so stalin-approval .

Example:

Electro-Industrial

As the 80’s rolled on, electronic instrument technology was advancing at a fast pace, and industrial music quickly adopted the new array of synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines that made creating industrial sounds a less cumbersome and demanding process, and allowed for more dense productions. This era set a lot of the standards of the genre, especially the super-tight percussion rhythms, a result of the electronic programming and sequencing of drum machines and samplers. Thus, a more “electro” sound.

Examples:

EBM

EBM, or Electronic Body Music, mixed industrial with techno and other early EDM to produce a more uptempo, dance-friendly version of the genre. I read accounts of acid house DJs mixing some EBM into their sets back in the day, and the distinctly not industrial club-goers seemed none the wiser.

Examples:

Industrial Metal

By far the most commercially successful sub-genre and the one most people with a passing knowledge of the genre think of when they hear “industrial,” industrial metal is a bit of a paradox. Industrial was originally a distinctly anti-rock genre, as it was trying to escape the archetypes of blues-folk that informed popular music of the era, including rock; it was supposed to be, industrial music for industrial people. However, it ended up being a “you got peanut butter in my jelly!” situation, as chunky metal riffs just work really, really well over industrial percussion and distorted synths.

Examples:

Futurepop

What EBM did with techno in the 80’s, futurepop did with trance in the 90’s. Owing to that, this is one of the more approachable sub-genres of industrial, especially the stuff that’s more trance with industrial flavors than industrial with trance flavors.

Examples:

Darkwave

A.K.A. Industrial Goth. It’s not surprising that there’s been a lot of cross-pollination between these two genres, as they developed around the same time, both took influence from punk, and deal with similar subject matters.

Aggrotech

This genre sounds exactly like the name implies. Hard techno beats? Check. The buzziest, superest supersaws to ever saw? Check. Lyrics desperately trying to be edgy, but they’re so processed and distorted you can’t make out what they’re saying? Check. If you’ve ever seen one of those videos of someone in a cybergoth outfit dancing, the music in it was probably aggrotech. This is the chuddiest sub-genre of industrial; one of the seminal bands in it is Suicide Commando, but I didn’t link any of their songs because they’re almost all problematic.

Examples:

Industrial Rap

Another hybridization that seems contradictory on first glance; the slowed down break beat samples of rap and the rigid rhythms of industrial seem too at odds. However, both genres deal heavily with alienation, urban decay, and radical politics, so the thematic similarities make it work. There’s a lot of overlap with industrial rap and the horrorcore sub-genre of rap.

Examples:

Recent Grab bag

Due to the age of the genre, a lot of the examples above are decades old. So I wanted to highlight some interesting and unique songs of more recent vintage:

Want to contribute a theme?

If you’d like to contribute to the weekly megathread or suggest recommendations, please message /u/buhbyelittlegumshoe@hexbear.net. Artists, genres, eras, albums, etc. are all viable candidates.