Industrial & Offshoots - Wofford College

Industrial & Its Offshoots:

Excerpts from Piero Scaruffi s History of Rock Music :
http://www.scaruffi.com/history/

Industrial-metal

A seminal achievement of the latter part of the decade was the merger of
industrial music with hard-rock and heavy metal, pioneered in Switzerland by the
Young Gods (1), whose L'Eau Rouge (1989) made music by sampling heavy-
metal guitars and symphonic sounds. In France, Treponem Pal used real guitars.
In Canada, Numb performed brutal surgery on techno beats.

Formed in Germany by keyboardist Sasha Konietzko, guitarist Nick "En" Esch
and English vocalist Raymond Watts (later of Pig), KMFDM (3) debuted with the
tentative What Do You Know Deutschland (1986) in a derivative robotic style, but
found their true voice with Naive (1992), an album that was both explosive and
robotic, welding blues, dub, gospel, hip-hop and heavy-metal in a substance that
was both guitar-driven and keyboards-driven. The idea was refined on Angst
(1993) by incorporating the steady beats of disco-music and techno, while the
guitar riffs were pushed to the fore to compete with Ministry and Nine Inch Nails;
and Nihil (1995) found a closure of sort, replacing the angst with a nihilistic (but
not desperate) acceptance of a grotesque futurism.

However, the fusion of industrial music and heavy-metal was completed mainly
by the Chicago bands. Criminal vocals, jack-hammer rhythms, and piercing
guitars took over the gothic/atmospheric noise of early industrial music. Al
Jourgensen's Ministry (12), and their Belgian offshoot, Luc Van Acker's Revolting
Cocks, led the charge. Ministry's first tour de force of machine music, Twitch
(1986), was still in the vein of Cabaret Voltaire but already displayed the violent
fits that eventually took over The Land Of Rape And Honey (1988): guitar riffs

and distortions, hammering drums, sound effects and demonic vocals gave new
meaning to the word "industrial". It was heavy-metal disguised as avantgarde.
The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste (1989), that featured the classic line-up of
vocalist Chris Connelly, bassist Paul Barker and drummer William Rieflin,
increased the dose of rhythm and guitars: Jourgensen was basically heading a
power-trio and playing a psychotic variation on speed-metal. Psalm 69 (1992)
was not innovative at all, but contained the blasphemous anthem Jesus Built My
Hot Rod (1991), with Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers on vocals, Ministry's
masterpiece and a masterpiece for all of rock'n'roll.

Towards the end of the decade, Chicago became the epicenter of the new
industrial genre (Ministry's, not Throbbing Gristle's), thanks to a plethora of bands
(My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Die Warzau) and to the numerous projects
launched in Chicago by former Killing Joke drummer Martin Atkins, notably
Pigface (1), whose Fook (1992) was typical of his method of recycling 15 years of
industrial music.

From this fertile soil Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails (12) was born, and the fate of
industrial music changed dramatically. Reznor created a persona that was a
cross of Dostoevsky's "demons", Goethe's Werther, Nietzsche's "ueber-mensch",
and De Sade's perverts. Technically, Reznor took elements from Throbbing
Gristle, Pere Ubu, Foetus and Ministry and filtered them through the new
computer technology. Reznor thus changed the very meaning of "rock band": the
band was him, singer and arranger. Brutal music, nihilistic lyrics and
claustrophobic atmospheres turned Pretty Hate Machine (1989) into the
manifesto/diary of an entire generation. Few albums better summarize the spirit
of the 1990s than The Downward Spiral (1994). Each song is both a battlefield
for the highest possible density of truculent sound effects and a largely-
autobiographical ode-psychodrama. The thundering polyrhythms, the chaotic and
cacophonous orgies, the grotesque "danse macabres", the chamber blues

pieces, the harsh counterpoints, the mournful melodies were carefully assembled
to deliver the sense of a man without a past or a present or a future, a man who
was a pure abstraction in search of meaning, pure form in search of content.
Reznor retreated towards a simpler format, albeit using the same tools (psychotic
screaming, killer synths, metallic percussions, brutal distortions), on the double
album Fragile (1999). Reznor showed that he was not interested in angst for the
sake of angst, and cared more for meditation on his own angst; that he was not
indulging in insanity but merely puzzled by it.

Texas' Angkor Wat (11), led by guitarists Adam Grossman and Danny Lohner,
coined the futuristic grindcore of When Obscenities Become Reality (1989) that
was both epic, hysterical and apocalyptic, while Corpus Christi (1990) was a
more psychological work of morbid atmospheres.

Post-industrial music

In San Jose, Neurosis (12), added keyboards and samples to their background of
speed-metal and hardcore to pen the terrible visions of Souls At Zero (1992), that
scoured infernal depths and treaded a fine line between improvisation and
composition. The tracks on Enemy Of The Sun (1993) had no melodic center to
speak of. They constantly teetered over the abyss, in a vain quest for an
emotional center of mass. Sounds obeyed no geometry, they were outpours of
desperation. Through Silver In Blood (1996), possibly their masterpiece, was a
work of spasmodic tension that constantly teeters on the edge of the psychic
abyss. Neurosis' music was one of psychological subtlety, based on the cynical
orchestration of eerie dissonances, heavy riffs, frantic drumming, instrumental
distortions, screams, whispers and echoes, a blend that mostly sounded like the
nightmare of a deranged mind. Their side-project, Tribes of Neurot (1), dealt with
experimental minimalist/ambient/psychedelic music. Static Migration (1998), an
extreme experiment of electronic and guitar-based sound-painting, was mainly a

collaboration between Steve Von Till and Pain Teens' Scott Ayers (under the
moniker Walking Time Bombs).

In San Francisco, Steel Pole Bath Tub (2) adopted an abrasive and
psychological sound/stance that basically fused psychedelic trance, anthemic
punk-rock, heavy-metal bloodshed on Butterfly Love (1989) and the EP Lurch
(1990). An even darker mood envelops their most mature album, Tulip (1990),
the definitive document of their depressed hyper-realism.

Their tape-oriented side-project Milk Cult (2) makes ample use of samples, loops,
rhythm boxes, filtered vocals and electronic sounds, but, unlike SPBT, the results
are humorous, not tragic. Dada and Salvador Dali would be proud of the
sketches on Burn Or Bury (1995) and Project M-13 (2000), that deconstruct and
satirize genres while offering a different take on reality. Humour and avantgarde
coexist and complement each other.

In New York, Cop Shoot Cop (12) carried out a devastating attack against the
conventions of popular music with Consumer Revolt (1990). Their songs were
terrifying kammerspielen of the post-industrial age, noisy, percussive, unstable
bacchanals. Ominous bass lines wove fear against a wall of guitar distortions and
lugubrious organ drones. Melodies were torn apart by sudden bursts of noir-
tinged big-band swing a` la Foetus, by demented collages of sound effects, by
piercing guitars and obsessed drumming. Proving that their fury was not only an
incontrollable urge, White Noise (1991) was an encyclopedic work, whose songs
quoted the most disparate traditions without belonging to any of them. The band
learned to play on Ask Questions Later (1993), and thus revealed their "blues"
soul, despite drowning it into a catastrophic landscape of fractured rhythms,
grotesque noise and desolate vocals.

Also in New York, the multimedia collective Missing Foundation (11) created
politically-inspired music a` la David Peel and the Fugs that borrowed from
Foetus and Ministry. Missing Foundation (1987) was mainly a bundle of
fastidious noise, propelled by grotesque, amateurish playing that packed a
mixture of Pop Group's paroxysm and MC5's terrorism. 1933 (1988) was even
more barbaric, primitive, minimal, a truly revolutionary work that attempted a
dozen different directions.

In Boston, Think Tree's Like The Idea (1992) mixed folk, cacophony, free-jazz,
dance beats, orchestral sounds and electronic techniques.
In Texas, Pain Teens (12), a duo of electronics (Scott Ayers) and vocals, bridged
psychedelic, erotic, gothic and industrial elements to produce the expressionist,
dissonant wasteland of Case Histories (1989), and the orgiastic, decadent and
psychotic rituals of Born In Blood (1990). Barbaric guitars, primordial percussions
and agonizing wails increased the tension in the nightmarish bacchanals of
Stimulation Festival (1992). Abandoning the therapeutic shock of those albums,
Ayers coined a post-Freudian and post-Brechtian form of communication with
Destroy Me Lover (1993). The compositions sculpted with his collage technique
(relying more on guitar feedback and less on vocals) covered a vast territory,
from Chrome to Pink Floyd, while retaining the format of the rock song. The
storm subsided on Beasts Of Dreams (1995), a display of Ayers' magician's skills
via a series of musical abstractions.

In England, Justin Broadrick, a former Napalm Death, started Godflesh (12) to
play post-industrial music that fuses elements of Foetus and Big Black. Godflesh
(1988) was one of the bleakest albums since early Swans, and, overall, sounded
like the last spasm of a dying man. The horrific monoliths of Streetcleaner (1989)
fused grind-core and industrial dance, achieving a level of intensity that had few
rivals. Pure (1992) emphasized heavy-metal guitar and thundering rhythms, and
included a 20-minute aural montage of atonal sounds that could compete with

Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Broadrick also pursued his experimental-noise
ambitions with the side-project Final.

The legendary career of Dead Kennedys' front-man and agit-prop preacher Jello
Biafra (1) was mainly a sequence of high-level collaborations. His polemic wit
and his saber-rattling vocals employed Ministry's guitarist Alien Jourgensen and
bassist Paul Barker for one of industrial-metal's masterpieces, Lard's EP The
Power Of Lard (1988), and its follow-up The Last Temptation Of Reid (1990),
which paraded explosive raps, terrifying progressions, expressionistic recitation,
grotesque dances and demented rigmaroles. He then teamed up with Steel Pole
Bath Tub and King Snake Roost's guitarist Charlie Tolnay to form Tumor Circus
and record Tumor Circus (1991), another dose of terrorism in music.

Grindcore 1986-88

Under pressure from hardcore, the rhythm of heavy-metal kept getting faster and
faster. In the mid 1980s, New York's Nuclear Assault (1), a spin-off of Anthrax,
invented "grindcore" with Game Over (1986), and perfected it with Survive
(1988). The genre became immediately popular in Britain, where it simply
followed in the footsteps of Crass and Discharge. Napalm Death (1), led by the
phenomenal trio of raving lunatic Lee Dorrian, epileptic drummer Mick Harris and
kamikaze guitarist Justin Broadrick, defined a new standard of ultrasonic rhythm
and fragmented melodies on Scum (1987) and raised it to a wall of desperate
noise on their milestone recording, From Enslavement To Obliteration (1988).
The grindcore and death-metal cultures met when Carcass (1) released Reek Of
Putrefaction (1988), a horror nightmare narrated by a zombie that made the term
"magniloquent" seem a pathetic understatement. After approaching "music" on
Symphony Of Sickness (1989), they refounded the genre with the lengthy pieces
(a contradiction in terms) of Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious (1991).

Bolt Thrower (1) debuted with a concentrate of grindcore cliches, In Battle There
Is No Law (1988), but their second album, the "fanta-macabre" concept Realm Of
Chaos (1989), was one of the most original works of the school.

Death-metal 1987-89

In the meantime, under the same pressure of ever increasing frenzy, "black
metal" was mutating into "death-metal". "Death-metal" was born from the fusion
of Slayer's speed-metal, Helloween's black metal, and Napalm Death's grindcore.
The term was coined by Possessed in San Francisco, for their Seven Churches
(1985), but the cradle of the genre was truly Florida, that would soon count on a
number of vicious, truculent, brutal bands. Death (1) opened the party with
Scream Bloody Gore (1987), but their most accomplished fantasy was Leprosy
(1988). Even tighter and darker was Deicide (1990), although Deicide (1) would
never match its bloodlust. Morbid Angel's Altars Of Madness (1989) and
Obituary's Slowly We Rot (1989) were more predictable. Compared with the
simple canon of the Florida bands, the albums by San Francisco's Sadus (1),
such as Illusions (1988), were articulate and (relatively speaking) baroque.

Death metal in the 1990s

The terrifying sound of grindcore and death-metal continued to thrive in the USA
thanks to New York's Brutal Truth (1), with Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme
Responses (1992), Buffalo's Cannibal Corpse, with Tomb of the Mutilated
(1992), Louisiana's Acid Bath, with When The Kite String Pops (1994).
And thanks to the creative work of three American groups, "death-metal" was
rapidly mutating into something at the same time more terrible and more musical.
Type O Negative (101) in New York achieved the most shocking fusion of metal,
industrial and gothic languages. With vocalist Peter "Steele" Ratajczyck
convincingly impersonating a psychopath who uttered nihilist, racist, sexist,
fascist invectives, keyboardist Josh Silver molding grandiose sonic architectures,

and guitarist Kenny Hickey highlighting the turpitude of the stories with
excoriating noises, the terrifying vision of Slow Deep And Hard (1991) acquired a
metaphysical dimension besides and beyond its hyper-realistic overtones,
bridging the philosophical themes of sex and death the way a black mass would
do. Moral ambiguity translated into musical ambiguity, as anthemic choruses
wavered like funereal dirges, epic riffs shrieked like agonizing spasms in the
struggle for survival, and homicidal fantasies peaked with evil apotheosis.
Contrasts and juxtapositions blurred the difference between hell and paradise.
Each song was structured as a sequence of movements, each movement
arranged in a different fashion, and the sequence leading to unrelenting
suspense. They sounded like Wagnerian mini-symphonies composed in Dante's
Inferno and supercharged with fear and despair. The apocalypse subsided on
Bloody Kisses (1993), a more sincere fresco of urban violence.

Today Is The Day (22), in Tennessee, straddled the border between grindcore,
noise-rock, death-metal, hardcore, progressive-rock and industrial music. The
visceral nightmares of Supernova (1993) were full of sonic experiments and
stylistic twists, but Willpower (1994) went beyond the "ambience" to extract sheer
angst from Steve Austin's screams and the trio's assorted cacophony. Each song
sounded like a natural catastrophe, each song was the soundtrack of an irrational
state of mind. Scott Wexton's sampling machines (replacing the bass player)
bestowed an electronic flavor to Today is The Day (1996). The effect was to
enhance the progressive-rock part of the equation, a fact that help sustain the
stylistic collage of Temple Of The Morning Star (1997): no less macabre and
emphatic, the music also felt surreal and cathartic. It was still the sound of a
psychological torture, but one that mirrored some kind of supernatural beauty.
Fear Factory (11), in Los Angeles, painted their harrowing mural of urban
decadence with an emphasis on rhythm: thrashing, grinding beats spread like
neurotransmitters inside the nervous system of the cyberpunk manifesto Soul of
a New Machine (1992). Songs evolved rather than just erupt. The music of

Demanufacture (1995), featuring Front Line Assembly's keyboardist Rhys Fulber,
seemed to come from another world, saturated with blasphemous truths about
this world. Its cascading bombshells kept morphing into cingulate beasts and
emanating poisonous miasmas.

This triad pretty much subverted the conventions of the genre, and created a new
kind of music, tailored for the issues and the mood of the cyberpunk generation.
The connection between hardcore and heavy-metal had been kept alive by New
York's Biohazard, especially on Urban Discipline (1993). A new form of metal-
punk mixture was secreted towards the end of the decade by Missouri's
Coalesce (1), who vomited the formidable metal-punk maelstrom of Give Them
Rope (1998), and New Jersey's Dillinger Escape Plan, with Calculating Infinity
(1999).