The term "industrial music" was first used by Monte Cazazza, an avantgarde composer based in San Francisco, but the meaning of "industrial music" was defined in Sheffield, England. Performance artists had employed abrasive, lugubrious soundtracks for their shows since the 1960s. As the technology improved, those soundtracks became more and more extreme. The marriage of avantgarde art and avantgarde music that dated from the days of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground was revived by the new wave, especially in California, and eventually landed in Europe. Sheffield became the emblem of the industrial society.

Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, the inventors of "industrial music", were familiar with the noise of a factory and decided to use that noise as a metaphor for the human condition at the end of the 20th century. They began composing lengthy suites of electronic noise that were inspired by the creaking, the hissing and the thuds of machines, by the metronomes, by the clockwork mechanisms of a factory.

However, the core theme of the music played by Throbbing Gristle (15) was not science-fiction: it was pornography and horror. Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson, Neil Megson (Genesis P-Orridge) and Christine Carol Newby (Cosey Fanni Tutti) were more interested in exploring disturbing states of the mind than painting the future of humankind. Their focus was on the traumas of ordinary souls, souls lost to the machinery of the industrial society. Their manifesto and masterpiece, Second Annual Report (1977), was subtitled "music from the death factory". Its pieces used cacophonous electronics, terrified screams, atonal guitars and found sounds, to create a ritual of therapeutic shock and cathartic liberation. They employed free-jazz improvisation and winked at the avantgarde techniques of "musique concrete" and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The sound of the metropolis that came alive in their suites was the sound of the lives sacrificed to the machines, not the sound of the machines that used those lives. Their performances coupled this "noise" with multimedia shows that were no less provocative: Newby pioneered performance art based on bodily fluids and all sorts of erotic fetishism. Throbbing Gristle never stopped producing this kind of Freudian mayhems, as documented by the studio album Heathen Earth (1980), by the live Mission Of Dead Souls (1981) and by the soundtrack for In The Shadow Of The Sun (1984), all of which are structured around lengthy streams of consciousness and abstract sound-painting, but, at the same time, the band changed course with D.O.A. (1978), a collection of electronic vignettes inspired by Brian Eno's Before And After Science and Ron Geesin's Electrosound that, for the most part, focused on the mechanical landscape of factories, warehouses and assembly lines. The new protagonists were the machines: their cold steady rhythms, their screeching metallic noises, their symphony of inarticulate patterns. 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) added synthetic dance beats and simple melodies, thus opening the floodgates to disco-oriented industrial music, the progenitor of synth-pop.

The parable of Cabaret Voltaire (2) epitomized the entire industrial school: an abnormal number of releases (mostly pretentious and trivial), and a quick conversion to dance music. Initially, Richard Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson were inspired by early (pre-disco) Kraftwerk and early (pre-funk) Pink Floyd. Their early recordings, such as the album Mix-up (1978) and the EP Three Mantras (1980), boasted collage-like pieces of abrasive, distorted sounds and mechanical rhythms. Unlike Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire introduced an "eastern" element of trance. But they quickly rediscovered the song format with Red Mecca (1981) and then began propelling it with hyperkinetic funk rhythms on the double EP 2x45 (1982). The albums that followed were stylish electronic dance music that had nothing in common with industrial music.

The multimedia shows created by Adi Newton's Clock DVA (3) differed from the other Sheffield horror-shock experiences because they focused on jams that bridged jazz-rock and acid-rock, as documented on White Souls In Black Suits (1980). The better structured and danceable ballads of Thirst (1981) introduced a visionary artist, capable of both epic and apocalyptic feats. The sound of Clock DVA continued to evolve with Advantage (1983), this time towards "noir" atmospheres and Roxy Music-like decadence. Newton's arrangements became baroque on subsequent albums, starting with Buried Dreams (1989), which showed a disproportionate attention to form rather than content.

The spirit of industrial music was related to punk-rock (if nothing else for being so radical) but the means employed were quite different, as industrial combos shunned the traditional rock trio of guitar, drums and bass in favor of electronic instruments. The spirit was rebellious and outrageous, just like punk-rock, but the sound was hardly rock at all.

The spirit of industrial music was certainly in sync with the American "new wave". Pere Ubu's "modern dance" and Devo's de-volution rock had just addressed the same theme: individual alienation in the industrial society. It is a theme that had been explored before by rock musicians as varied as Frank Zappa, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Neu.

While the childish, barbaric, anarchic structure of industrial compositions seemed akin to what futurism and dadaism had preached at the beginning of the century, the sinister and melancholy tone of those compositions set them apart from anything else that writers and artists had conceived before. Only science fiction had explored the emotional realm of runaway technology, of robots that take over the world, of psychological holocausts. Industrial music viewed technology as a nightmare. It was as "negative" as punk-rock.

Furthermore, the shocking nature of those soundtracks led the perpetrators to indulge in porno and horror overtones that added to the general sense of apocalypse.

When both the leadings bands, Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret, abandoned the harsh, gruesome overtones of their early recordings and embraced dance beats and synthetic melodies, the rest of the industrial scene followed suit. "Industrial" came to be an ambiguous term, referring both to the radical sound paintings of early Throbbing Gristle and to the danceable melodic vignettes of subsequent recordings.

Diversification 1979-85

Industrial music benefited, like punk-rock, from the boom of the independent record industry. The "indies" allowed a generation of obscure avantgarde musicians (mostly amateurs) to start a band and cut records. The "indie" phenomenon is also responsible for the over-indulgence of these musicians, who began releasing lengthy albums of mediocre music with no regard for the artistic value. For the first time in history, the "do it yourself" spirit was applied to electronic music. It was the electronic equivalent of garage-rock: the spirit meant more than the skills.

On the other hand, the sheer number of record labels allowed a plethora of sub-genres. The term "industrial" merely identified a community of avantgarde musicians. The individual members often had little in common.

Some were architecting electronic symphonies of musique concrete (Nurse With Wound, Zoviet France); some were experimenting with rhythm and texture (This Heat, 23 Skidoo, Hula); some were adopting an esoteric stance (Current 93, Hafler Trio, Psychic Tv, Coil); some were weaving static sheets of drones (Dome, i.e. former Wire members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis); some were merely painting walls of white noise (Martin Bowes' Attrition, Nigel Ayers' Nocturnal Emissions, Metabolist, British Electric Foundation, i.e. former Human League members Ian Marsh and Martyn Ware, Cranioclast, Whitehouse, Konstruktivists); some were unleashing wild torrents of percussive sounds (Test Dept, David Jackman's Organum ); some were re-interpreting Brian Eno's ambient music and ethnic trance (Lustmord, Andrew Hulme's O Yuki Conjugate); some were experimenting with sound manipulation (Bryan Jones' Muslimgauze, who made more than 100 albums of tape-manipulated ethnic voices and instruments); and some were simply pursuing synth-pop (Chris & Cosey of Throbbing Gristle).

Steven Stapleton's project, Nurse With Wound (3), harked back to the satirical and iconoclastic experiments of Dadaism and Futurism. His early, formative works (frequently shared with David Tibet of Current 93), such as Homotopy To Marie (1982) and Sylvie And Babs (1985), were similar in spirit to the Fugs' Virgin Forest, to Frank Zappa's breakneck operettas and to the Residents' multiform suites. His art of the collage turned decidedly cacophonous with works such as the EPs Gyllenskold (1984) and Brained By Falling Masonry (1984), but achieved a sort of "classicism" on the album Spiral Insana (1986). Later works would veer towards a type of ambient music akin to the static, buzzing pieces of minimalist composers such as LaMonte Young and Alvin Lucier.

The early collages (1982) by Zoviet France (2) were even more savage than Nurse With Wound's, evoking a cross between "musique concrete" and tribal music. The monumental double-albums Mohnomishe (1983) and Eostre (1984) reduced the impact of their "wall of noise", but retained the two key elements that set Zoviet France apart: a trance-oriented approach and "lo-fi" electronics. The tetralogy of "Charm, Ceremony, Chance, Prophecy" ("CCCP"), begun with Misfits, Loony Tunes And Squalid Criminals (1986), marked a move towards a less hostile and more atmospheric sound, which culminated with the eastern-sounding trance/dance of Shadow Thief Of The Sun (1991).

This Heat (11), a keyboards-bass-guitar trio, coined a unique style that borrowed from progressive-rock, jazz-rock, electronic music, industrial music and, last but not least, German avant-rock of Can, Neu and Faust. Tape loops, overdubs, sound effects and noise abound on their first album and masterpiece, This Heat (1979). The austere and erudite approach to composition, and an impressive repertory of musical tricks, amounted to little less than a manual of new harmony. Abandoning the difficult rhythms and returning to the song format, Deceit (1981) popularized the idea in the era of synth-pop.

23 Skidoo (2), mainly Fritz Haaman's project, extended Cabaret Voltaire's research program first with the tribal polyrythms of the EP Seven Songs (1982), that also contained an early fusion of jazz, dub and ambient elements (predating "illbient" by a decade), then with the cosmic-messianic suite of The Culling Is Coming (1983), that employed Tibetan percussions and electronic noise, and finally with the dub-funk percussive monster Urban Gamelan (1984).

David Tibet's project, Current 93 (2), that often employed Nurse With Wound's Steve Stapleton, Coil's John Balance and/or 23 Skidoo's Fritz Haaman, centered on lugubrious ceremonies. Nature Unveiled (1984), the quintessence of Tibet's black masses, fusing mantra and Gregorian invocations, "unveiled" an ode to eternal suffering, a terrifying fresco of the Universal Judgement. His experiments on the human voice peaked with Dogs Blood Rising (1985), another aural puzzle aimed at creating sinister atmospheres. Tibet's new course was announced by Imperium (1987), a suite of sepulchral elegies imbued of themes from medieval Christianity, set to the usual sound of hell, and embellished with instruments of the Renaissance. This bard of apocalyptic folk-rock ballads set out to bridge esoteric music of the 1980s and hippy communes of the 1960s, particularly with the psychedelic piece Hitler As Kalki, from Thunder Perfect Mind (1992). David Tibet's pagan acoustic folk (reminiscent of the Incredible String Band), hardly related to his beginnings, would become a genre of its own.

Hafler Trio (1), aka Andrew McKenzie, devoted himself to highly experimental music that toyed with electronic clusters, tape loops, found sounds, etc. At times, he achieved an impressive synthesis of the languages of concrete, industrial, cosmic and ambient music, perhaps best experienced on A Thirsty Fish (1987) and on the six-movement "mass" Inoutof (1988).

John Balance and Throbbing Gristle's Peter Christopherson were the brains behind Coil (1), yet another pretentious esoteric project that experimented with alternative sources of sound, best on Horse Rotorvator (1986).

Psychic Tv, the new project by ex-Throbbing Gristle founding member Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson), found a way to bridge the old world of industrial music and the new world of "acid house".

Test Dept (1) played a hostile barrage of "found" percussions (particularly metallic objects), halfway between Neu and Einsturzende Neubaten. The pretext was used on Beating A Retreat (1984) for broader excursions in sound, and lent itself to large-scale live performances.

Lustmord (1), i.e. veteran industrial composer Brian Williams, adopted the vocabularies of cosmic and ambient music at a deeper psychological level on albums such as Paradise Disowned (1984) and especially Heresy (1990). A second phase began with the horror concept Monstrous Soul (1992) Primordial Atom and the two lengthy suites of The Place Where The Black Stars Hang (1994), Aldebaran Of The Hyades and Metastatic Resonance.

Several of these projects shared a common destiny. They began with highly individual styles that borrowed from the avantgarde. Due to the limitations of their techniques and tools, those styles sounded like an electronic update of the free-form suites that were popular among acid-rock practitioners of the 1960s. Finally, by the late 1980s, almost all of them had converted to dance music. Towards the end of the decade, "industrial" had become mainly the name of a dance.

Only in the new century would "industrial music" pay off. Then the same musicians who had hastily abandoned it for more lucrative disco-oriented projects returned to it, and, in fact, went beyond it. Organum, for example, would drift towards classical and minimalist music with the trilogy of Sanctus (2006), Amen (2006) and Omega.

Australia 1980-82

Australia and Australian expats contributed in a significant manner to the genre. Bands such as SPK and Severed Heads were as qualified and as pretentious as their British counterparts.

On the other hand, James Thirlwell (114), better known as Foetus and also known as Clint Ruin, Steroid Maximus and Wiseblood, became a protagonist of both the London (1978) and the New York (1983) counterculture, and, ultimately, one of the most significant musicians of the decade, wedding the punk aesthetics to classical-music ambitions.
Bard of the most reckless nihilism, quintessential prophet of "trash" as a form of art, Foetus promoted a repulsive hyper-punk persona that served well to frame his musical journey. Morbidly attracted to the most repulsive manifestations of human nature, both physical ones (vomit, excrements, sperm) and psychological ones (torture, sadism, homicide), Foetus ripped apart in a paroxysm of destruction any residual moral value. His oeuvre is an odyssey of aberrations, a catalog of hells. Foetus was an idealist of self-destruction, and global destruction was his utopia.
Hole (1984) was a chaotic carousel of garage-rock, swing, hip-hop, Captain Beefheart-ian blues, world-music, industrial rhythms, doo-wop harmonies, found noises, electronic effects, heavy-metal riffs and symphonic staccatos. Nail (1985), perhaps his masterpiece, was even more powerful, and in an "evil" way. Every single sound is exaggerated, overdone, dramatized. This album's songs are poems carved with a jack-hammer into the marble of a gravestone. A touch of retro` attitude (not too different from Frank Zappa's ventures into orchestral and jazz music) is drowned into magniloquent, sinister, gloomy, tragic, terrifying industrial "symphonies". But, ultimately, this was also a heartbreaking cry of grief that soars in a landscape of desolation and depravation. Thaw (1988) refined the idea behind these pieces for savage electronics, frantic orchestra and thundering polyrhythms, the idea of sheer aural density and power, the idea of massive, relentless, infernal atmospheres, the idea of a Wagner-ian emotional intensity with a catastrophic (not heroic) emphasis. In a sense, Foetus became the first classical composer of the punk civilization.
Quilombo (1991) and Gondwanaland (1992), the first two Steroid Maximus albums, presented a less austere and less destructive musician. They were schizophrenically divided into avantgarde pieces and big-band swing parodies. Quilombo managed to be playful while flirting with serialism, minimalism and musique concrete. Gash (1995), which features the super-group of guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Vincent Signorelli (Unsane) and bassist Tod Ashley (Cop Shoot Cop), completed the metamorphosis presenting a gargantuan essay in the sampling and manipulation of musical genres.
Foetus' major compositions are sonic allegories, behind whose harmonic disorder, torrential dissonances and percussive violence one can guess unspeakable, brutal and obscene acts at both the levels of the individual psyche and the collective subconscious. Foetus' vision is one of extreme pessimism, of moral (if not physical) apocalypse: the individual is reduced to a demon-like pervert, and society is reduced to one of hell's circles. Coherently with this vision, his music is also apocalyptic, the kind of soundtrack one can expect to hear while being marched towards hell's gates after the universal judgement. The effect of Foetus' scores is often capable of evoking the end of the world.

Electronic Body Music 1980-84

Belgium coined one of the most successful currents of industrial dance, "electronic body music", a by-product of latter-period Cabaret Voltaire, influenced by disco-music and science-fiction. Geography (1982), by Front 242 (1), was the milestone recording. Then came Klinik (and their offshoot Dive), Neon Judgement, Vomito Negro, etc. Commercially speaking, this industrial school was even more influential than the British school.

A similar style developed in Vancouver, Canada. On their early albums, such as Bites (1985), Skinny Puppy (1) delivered a cyber-punk mixture of melodies that were hardly melodic at all, tight cadences by a platoon of drum-machines and ghostly electronics, although they would reach a more cohesive sound on the concept VIVisectVI (1988) and on the Ministry-influenced Rabies (1989).

Front Line Assembly (1) were also followers of Cabaret Voltaire and prophets of the cyber-punk generation. Their most refined recording was the technological poem State Of Mind (1988). Bill Leeb (whose real name is Wilhelm Schroeder) conducted at the same time a number of parallel projects: Cyberaktif, Noise Unit (Front Line Assembly's evil alter-ego), the progressive-house experiment Intermix, the ambient/new-age Delerium, Will and Synaesthesia .

The "electronic body music" of these bands from Belgium and Canada laid the foundations for the alternative dance-music of the 1990s.

German experimental music 1981-84

In Germany, a number of projects were purveyors of noise and anarchy well beyond the proclaims of industrial music, bridging punk aesthetics and expressionism: Der Plan, whose Geri Reig (1979) was one of the earliest experimental albums of their generation; Die Krupps, who debuted with the wild cacophony of Stahlwerksymphony (1981) before converting to metal-industrial dance music; P16D4, who toyed with musique concrete and electronic improvisation on Nichts Niemand Nirgends Nie (1985); Die Haut, whose Schnelles Leben (1982) was one of the most radical works of the national school; HNAS, whose Im Schatten Der Mohre (1987) was noise at the border between industrial, psychedelic and progressive rock.

Einsturzende Neubauten (12) were the main voice of this generation, bridging the gap between 1970s progressive-rock, Throbbing Gristle's industrial music, Swell Maps' punk-rock and something (very atonal, very chaotic, very non-musical, both austere and subversive) that had no name yet. Singer and guitarist Blixa Bargeld (Christian Emmerich) and percussionists Mufti F.M. Einheit (Frank Strauss) and N.U. Unruh (Andrew Chudy) created a living theatre of self-destruction. Their live shows were pagan rituals that sacrificed instruments and people to their totemic angst. The claustrophobic atmosphere of Kollaps (1981) relied on a sinister assortment of harsh sounds (found objects, industrial cadences, psychotic vocals, distorted guitars) but it nonetheless achieved lyrical pathos. Zeichnungen das Patienten OT (1983), their masterpiece, was an expressionistic collage set in a spiritual wasteland. Their cacophonous horror was sincere and internal. That was a point of no return. Only the psychodrama Fuenf auf der nach oben offenen Richterskala (1987) approached that manic suicidal intensity again. Their art, made of silence as much as of sound, made of "gestures" as much as of "harmony", was more closely related to Beckett's theatre than to Berry's rock'n'roll. As their technique became "manner", the ensemble relied on a combination of highly emotional elements to disorient (not shock) the audience: the three-movement "concrete" suite Fiat Lux, off Haus der Luege (1989), and the suite Headcleaner, off Tabula Rasa (1993), carried out less chaotic journeys through their earthly (and very German) hell. Eventually, the old terrorists transformed into gentlemen philosophers, and their visceral ferocity turned into subtle grandeur, but pieces such as Perpetuum Mobile, off Perpetuum Mobile (2004), showed the fundamental continuity between the various stages of the group's militancy. The apocalypse had been postponed, but the burial was already underway.

Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft, with Gold Und Liebe (1981), Palais Schaumburg, with Palais Schaumburg (1981), and Xmal Deutschland, with Fetisch (1983), contributed to move synth-pop towards industrial dance-music.

The all-girl group Malaria (1) recorded Emotion (1982), borrowing from Art Bears' progressive-rock, Soft Machine's jazz-rock, and Talking Heads' art-funk.

Switzerland's Yello pursued a lighter version of Kraftwerk's sci-fi cabaret on Solid Pleasure (1980) and then focused on parodies of disco-music.

In France, Philippe Fichot's Die Form (1) developed a unique form of experimental noise with Die Puppe (1982), a concept album about death and eros.

In Italy, Pankow's Freiheit Fuer Die Sklaven (1987) offered a dark expressionist version of "electronic body music", while Maurizio Bianchi engaged in some of the most extreme experiments on sound in works such as Symphony For A Genocide (1981) and Endometrio (1983). In Spain, Esplendor Geometrico began with a rather derivative style but achieved with Mekano-Turbo (1988) the link between the harsh wall of noise of early "industrialists" and the electronic body music of their descendants.

Most, if not all, of these musicians would demonstrate their fundamental lack of talent by following the trends. First they would adopt disco beats and make danceable records. Then they would adopt the aesthetics of Brian Eno's ambient music and turn to long, quiet drones.

Japanese noise-core

Japan's rock was more than "alternative": it was "anti". A sadistic passion for chaos and noise led to "noise-core", the radical sound of Japan's holy triad.
Zeni Geva (1), the creature of Kazuyucki Kishino "Null", indulged in dissonant and gloomy orgies, in the tradition of early Swans and Big Black, on albums such as Total Castration (1992).
Merzbow, the brainchild of Masami Akita, one of the most prolific musicians of all times (not a compliment), was a theoretician of surrealism in music but practiced a form of savage violence that was more akin to suicide bombing on non-musical works such as Rainbow Electronics (1990), Music For Bondage Performance (1991), Venereology (1994) and Tauromachine (1998).
The Boredoms (2) of guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto and vocalist Yamatsuka Eye were clowns as well as scouts, imitating/exploring Faust's anarchic stream of consciousness on Soul Discharge (1989), Frank Zappa's most childish gags on Pop Tatari (1992), the Residents-like nursery-school bacchanal of Chocolate Synthesizer (1994), and so on; eventually condensing their aesthetic vision into the 64-minute madcap merry-go-round of Go on Super Roots 5 (1995), the seven "super" tracks of Super aR (1999), the nine-movement suite Vision Creation Newsun (2000), the two hypertribal suite Seadrum (2004).
No less terrible than the three more famous acts, Juntaro Yamanouchi's Gerogerigegege released the devastated uber-punk scum-idolizing affronts of Senzuri Champion (1987), Showa (1989) and especially Tokyo Anal Dynamite (1990), containing 75 brief songs, emphasizing their passion for defecation and masturbation.

USA

Industrial music spread from Britain back to the USA, where musicians such as Residents, Pere Ubu and Boyd Rice had laid the foundations for it. Strains of industrial music surfaced in Boston (John ZeWizz McSweeney's Sleep Chamber), Pennsylvania (Executive Slacks), Delaware (Batz Without Flesh), although they never amounted to a proper movement. A few acts based in New York bridged the gap with the ten-years old new-wave. David Lee Myers' Arcane Device (1) bordered on electronic avantgarde on works such as Feedback Music (1988), a cassette of music based on feedback principles and performed by home-made "feedback machines", Engines Of Myth (1988) and Diabolis Ex Machina (1992), one of the most cacophonous albums of all times. Paul Lemos' Controlled Bleeding (1) began in a primitive/industrial vein with Knees And Bones (1985): visceral cacophony, walls of metallic percussions, devastating feedback, gothic litanies. The bleak and macabre atmosphere peak on Headcrack (1986), while the music became more accessible, leading eventually to the hypnotic electronica of Between Tides (1986) and the more conventional industrial/gothic dance of Trudge (1990). Lemos' side-project Skin Chamber Wound (1991) offered a nuclear fission of death-metal and industrial-music.