Industrial Metal : Post-Human Renegades
Metalhead are purists by nature. They all believe in the analog supremacy of voice, guitar, bass and drums. If you don't earn the skills necessary to interpret your own songs through years of solitary practice, you're not really a musician to them. Technical mastery is even more important to metal audiences than whether or not the songs they're listening to are good. I'd say maybe 50% of them play guitar and listen to the bands they listen to because they dream (secretly or not) to be as skillful with their instrument.
But not everyone thinks like that.
In the insanely detailed documentary about his early career The Man Who Fell to Earth, British composer and lovable weirdo Brian Eno claimed that he was never all that interested in composing music per se. That he wanted to find new and exciting sounds. He was not interested in controlling his instrument as much as to discover how his instrument could affect people emotionally. That idea is super important to an entire school of thought in extreme music, ranging from harsh noise to industrial metal.
Industrial music and industrial metal are preoccupied with creating feelings of uneasiness and alienation and if arbitrary compositional rules get in the way of achieving the desired effect, they would be cast into a bottomless pit and never be spoken of again. Let me introduce you to a style of metal that can be as brutal as it can be conceptual. A style where one's ideas bear as much weight as their technical and creative talent as interpreters. Industrial metal was a gateway into the weird stuff for me…
…and I hope it might be for you too.
Industrial music for industrial people
In order to properly appreciate industrial metal, you need to properly appreciate (or at least understand) industrial music. I could write you a twelve page description of what industrial music actually is, but it is essentially a blend of rock and electronic music with sonic and thematic avant-garde elements delivered in the rawest, most abrasive way possible. It's not supposed to be conventionally pleasant to hear. There's very little punk rock in industrial music, but its infectious energy was inspirational to it.
Unlike for most musical genres, there is no proper scene for industrial. It's part of a larger culture of fringe electronic music. I never went to a show with a full bill of industrial bands. The genre is always intermeshed with noise, power electronics, neofolk and whatnot. Industrial music is called this way because of the first label distributing such music called Industrial Records, founded in 1976 by members of foundational band (and de facto inventors of the genre) Throbbing Gristle.
Industrial Records was distributing the works of most of the first wave industrial artists: Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazzaza, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, The Leather Nun and whatnot. They were a bunch of belligerent marginals looking to antagonize people with violent, counterintuitive music and shocking imagery. They wanted to be ugly and to make you feel ugly on purpose. For a band like Throbbing Gristle, the songs were undistinguishable from the performance. I mean, check this out:
There's a theatricality and an immediacy to industrial music that would translate to its metal offspring a decade later or so. The overall emotional experience of a song is more important to an industrial artist than its composition itself. The composition will serve the experience, but not the opposite. So whether it's by the addition of samples, machine-like electronic rhythms, on-stage projections or other manipulations, industrial means to portrays the alienation and systemic violence of the modern condition.
If original industrial artists were absolutely not fucking interested in anything rock, the transition between the two paradigms operated mainly through Killing Joke and Big Black, two bands who’s level of not-giving-a-fuck mirrored Throbbing Gristle's and Monte Cazazza's. So punk rock and post-punk's anticonformism were instrumental into transitioning to industrial metal and it was mostly operated through distorted vocal delivery, dissonant harmonics and heavy and repetitive machine-like riffing.
In order to be played into existence, industrial metal also required the singular vision of another marginal soul who preferred to do his own thing.
…and then there were Justin Broadrick
The debate as to who exactly invented industrial metal involves two bands: Ministry and Godflesh. Proponents of the former claim that Ministry’s album The Land of Rape and Honey came a year prior to Godflesh's paradigm shifting Streetcleaner, but I would argue that it's not really a metal record. I mean, it's industrial as fuck in the line of the sound Canadian icons Skinny Puppy pioneered and it's metal in spirit, but Ministry didn’t turn full metal until 1991.
Believe it or not, the guy who changed everything was from the birthplace of metal itself: Birmingham, England. Justin Broadrick was raised by punks in a commune, so he didn’t identify easily with other people. He's a guy who always walked to the sound of his own drum. A lot of artists have influenced Godflesh's unique sound: power electronics pioneers Whitehouse, Swans, the aforementioned Brian Eno, of course Black Sabbath and I'm not even going to get into dub and electronica here.
Godflesh distinguish themselves from every other band out there (still today, but imagine in 1989) by their unapologetic use of drum machine, their intricate production and the use of sparse and repetitive lyrics in their songs. Their sound in monolithic and pulverizing and it changed everything. I wouldn't say anyone imitated them, but it gave permission to other industrial artists to use heaviness in their sound. Artists like Al Jourgensen and Ministry, who had it on the tip of his tongue all that time.
Originally a new wave band, Ministry quickly veered into adventurous and experimental territory. Lead by a quintessential anti-authority figure in Al Jourgensen, they’ve adopted industrial and then metal respectively as motors to their anarchist philosophy. Ministry’s sound (at least in the original era) was a lot faster and sample heavy than Godflesh. It had a disincarnate quality that I really liked, akin to watching the 6 PM news being hijacked by political weirdos.
In the same vein, there's KMFDM from Germany. Started as a straight industrial band like Ministry, they’re worked in downtuned guitars in the early 1990s and became one of the founding influences of nü metal. They’re another band more influenced by Skinny Puppy's brand of danceable electro-industrial more than by the founding precepts of the genre, but their influence on how industrial would later come to blend with metal is undeniable, especially on more extreme acts, which we’re about to discuss.
Fear Factory and Everyone Else
As you might know if you've been reading these: everything was different and weird in the nineties. The rules were flipped upside down and nothing made sense whatsoever. It also applies who how industrial music infiltrated both mainstream and extreme music more or less at the same time. People were fiending for dehumanizing music then and industrial guitar music started appearing everywhere. Wherever people looked and in the most remote creative regions of the human brain you can think of.
There were several game-changing moments in the decade. Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson were the defining acts of the era, but they were mostly rock artists. The most industrial industrial metal band of the nineties was undoubtedly Fear Factory and, like Godflesh before them, they didn't sound like anything we previously knew. No one has ever sounded like them since. Their sound was so idiosycratic, anyone who would've tried to copy them would've been figured out and ridiculed.
Their sound was easily identifiable through the use of Raymond Herrera's machine gun drumming, judicious use of sampling and keyboards and lyrical themes of futuristic chaos. Their album Demanufacture made industrial metal cool to more extreme acts and from that point on, everyone started doing it. Switzerland-based black metal outfit Samael started transitioning towards a more industrial sound on their 1996 record Passage, which lead the way to usage in even more extreme circles.
Samael was particularly great at it as they worked off-putting ideas into their sounds like the use piano and keyboards in unsettling ways. Robbing conventional instrument of their charm through odd composition is peak industrial mentality. French black metal outfit Blus Aus Nord also embraced the sound in their own way and so did Italy’s Aborym. The latter managed to combine the piston-like speed of Ministry with the heaviness of Godflesh into something unique and more extreme than ever.
There was also …And Ocean who became an all-out industrial metal band around the turn of the millennium, so did the symphonic black metal band Covenant (they renamed themselves The Kovenant in order to celebrate their new sound). The Axis of Perdition were another band from that era that got some attention. Mortiis experimented with industrial quite a bit. In Canada, Devin Townsend and Strapping Young Lad hybridized thrash metal with industrial. At some point, everyone was doing it.
Industrial Metal in the Twenty-First Century
The great majority of bands I just mentioned as historically significant for industrial metal are still active today under a form or another. If the original outfit has split up, ex-members are still doing industrial music on their own. But the name everyone thinks about when industrial metal is mentioned today is, unfortunately, Rammstein. They were ringleader in the last great mainstream metal movements (nü metal) and they’ve been sticking to their story still. So it’s not surprising that they are in a way.
Because industrial metal has influenced nü metal in its own way. In its futuristic aesthetic in its own way, but also in the way guitar was played. Downtuned, with extra power chord and an emphasis on rhythm rather than complexity. In my humble opinion. Rammstein is an unexciting and unexperimental band that’s not aligned with the pioneering spirit of industrial, but they do have the visuals and the spectacle part of it down. They use shocking, violent and primarily sexual imagery in order to promote their art.
Their singer is also a sex pervert, so that breaks the charm a little.
As you might’ve noticed, there are few all-out industrial metal bands. A lot of them use industrial elements to craft a unique and challenging identity for their sound, but few describe themselves a pure industrial. Americna madman Author & Punisher is one of them. If you’re not familiar with him, I highly suggest you check him out. He’s an engineer and designs his own instruments himself. He writes some of the heaviest and most soul-crushing music out there. I fucking love him.
Norwegian black metal band Dodheimsgard release a great industrial adjacent album in 2023 called Black Medium Current worth checking out although it’s not the purest sound. American bands like HEALTH and The Body can be industrial metal at times, but they are many things. Both push the boundaries between analog and digital in unconventional ways. Shapeshifters like Full of Hell also do experiment with the sound like they did on their last album on the song Fractured Bonds to Mecca.
Before I let you go, of course, I’ll leave you with 5 songs to help you better understand the evolution of industrial metal. Here they are:
Godflesh - Streetcleaner: Like Rats is the canonical track from the record, but I find that the title song with the Henry Lee Lucas sample at the start expressed better the disincarnate nature of industrial metal and how joyfully dislocated and disorganized it could be.
Ministry - Jesus Built My Hotrod: The ying to Godflesh’s yang, like Skinny Puppy is to Throbbing Gristle. Faster, rhtyhm (and rock) based and featuring Butthole Surfers’ own Gibby Haynes. It was as foundational, if not more than Godflesh to how industrial metal would be perceived by mainstream audiences.
Fear Factory - H-K (Hunter-Killer): Once again a quite different and arresting sound that blends analog and digital in its own way. The influence they had is underrated because they went the nü metal route for their two following records so no one wants to be associated with them, but this rules.
Samael - Jupiterian Vibe: What a weird and forward-thinking band. They are two Rammstein believe themselves to be. They use bongos and keyboard and guitars in the weirdest possible way in order to fuck with your expectations in this song. I love this band (and this record) to death.
Author & Punisher - Incinerator: This is the king of the mountain, right now. The man to beat. Just watching him play music is fucking terrifying, let alone hear it. Industrial metal will go wherever he wants to take it, really. People are gonna take their cues from him in the future.
