Hey--
When would you say Industrial Rock really hit mainstream/popularity--Like what year? And was it popular in 1999?

Hey--
When would you say Industrial Rock really hit mainstream/popularity--Like what year? And was it popular in 1999?


It was popular from about 1994 to 1996.

I'd say 1993 with Ministry and Nine Inch Nails being labeled "Industrial."  I don't recall Trent Reznor or Al Jourgensen ever using the word "industrial" to describe their music.  I might be wrong about that.  It was more of a label the record industry bestowed upon them.  Industrial aficionados like to give credit to Einsturzende Neubauten, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, etc.   It ranged from the Xenakis-like serious experimentalism of Neubauten to the Dadaist pop of Throbbing Gristle.  

There is an argument about whether "Industrial" refers to the way the music sounds or refers to a parody on the way the music industry produces music.  The more esoteric Industrialists lay claim to the latter, which is, again, more Dadaist.  Listeners like me who got their first taste of so-called Industrial music on the "Dry Lungs" compilations Placebo records released in the 1980s got a much wider view of the spectrum.  On those records you heard everything from Severed Heads to Un Drame Musical Instantané to If, Bwana to Controlled Bleeding.  Sometimes Industrial sounded like the sounds of industry: Tape loops of grinding noises, thundering percussion, ear-bleeding guitar.  Sometimes it was electronic and bouncy ala Severed Heads.  It could incorporate free jazz and theater, such as Un Drame Musical.  

Musicians such as Foetus and Al Jourgensen established a kind of angry hard rock called Industrial.  Prodigy brought in the electronica wing of Industrial.  

IMO, what Ministry and Nine Inch Nails are poor representatives of Industrial music.  Comparing Einsturzende Neubauten to Ministry is like comparing Andrew Lloyd Webber to Beethoven.  Don't even think about it.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/12/disgust.gif

If it was ever "popular", I missed it. :P


What I can remember about Industrial was in the late '80's around the time of Skinny Puppy... it certainly wasn't popular unless you were in the goth crowd, and its fans wanted to keep it that way.  The last thing they wanted was to be listening to something that was <gasp> mainstream!

I don't recall it ever really being mainstream, but it is very likely that I could have missed it.... during the grunge era (which includes 1993) I tuned out when it came to the radio!!!

If it was ever "popular", I missed it. :P


What I can remember about Industrial was in the late '80's around the time of Skinny Puppy... it certainly wasn't popular unless you were in the goth crowd, and its fans wanted to keep it that way.  The last thing they wanted was to be listening to something that was <gasp> mainstream!

I don't recall it ever really being mainstream, but it is very likely that I could have missed it.... during the grunge era (which includes 1993) I tuned out when it came to the radio!!!


If you remember Skinny Puppy in the '80s, you didn't miss it.  Skinny Puppy was the best blend of dance music and diabolical electronic rhapsodies.  Skinny Puppy had a hard edge which appealed to the glammier side of the metal scene.  They also hauled in a loyal political punk base with controversial stands against animal cruelty and nuclear war!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/06/love.gif

But seriously, "Cleans Fold & Manipulate" (1987)  is one of my favorite records of any genre any time, and I've heard A LOT of music of the years!  The guys were just at a high when the recorded this album.  They refined their sound to the most interesting and viable themes of their early work and molded the stygian to the compelling.  So instead of kids bumping and grinding to songs about getting it on, they're partying to lyrics from some sort of William S. Burroughs slurry.  It's just kinda decadent!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/10/vampy.gif
Ogre gave us the finger once.  We spotted him as a roadie at the NIN/Bowie show in '95.  We started chanting "Og-uhr - Oh-guhr" like ROTN, and he jacked us the bird!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/06/laughing.gif

Above all, when they recorded "Cleanse Fold & Manipulate" they perfected the art they were going to contribute.  It is for "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) we forgive Dalí for the "Hallucinogenic Torreador" (1969).  "The Hallucinogenic Toreador" is a richer, denser painting, not to mention being something like 10' x 13'.  However, it's the melted watches people remember Dalí for.

Anyway, I feel that way about later Skinny Puppy albums.  They could make good ones or the could make crummy ones.  It doesn't change the fact they made "Cleanse Fold & Manipulate" and it's a tremendous record.  I am forgiving of whatever Ministry does because they once made a record called 'Twitch' with Adrian Sherwood.  That was one of the first albums to pull me in the direction of Industrial -- and Dub Reggae via other Adrian Sherwood affiliates such as Mark Stewart* and the Maffia, Tackhead, and African Head Charge, and over to, Lee 'Scratch' Perry ad Mad Professor.

*NOT the Downtown composer/guitarist affiliated with Bang On A Can.

http://www.skowron007.dami-rz.pl/obrazki_w_sieci/skinny/1987_-_Cleanse,_Fold_and_Manipulate.jpg

If you remember Skinny Puppy in the '80s, you didn't miss it.  Skinny Puppy was the best blend of dance music and diabolical electronic rhapsodies.  Skinny Puppy had a hard edge which appealed to the glammier side of the metal scene.  They also hauled in a loyal political punk base with controversial stands against animal cruelty and nuclear war!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/06/love.gif

But seriously, "Cleans Fold & Manipulate" (1987)  is one of my favorite records of any genre any time, and I've heard A LOT of music of the years!  The guys were just at a high when the recorded this album.  They refined their sound to the most interesting and viable themes of their early work and molded the stygian to the compelling.  So instead of kids bumping and grinding to songs about getting it on, they're partying to lyrics from some sort of William S. Burroughs slurry.  It's just kinda decadent!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/10/vampy.gif
Ogre gave us the finger once.  We spotted him as a roadie at the NIN/Bowie show in '95.  We started chanting "Og-uhr - Oh-guhr" like ROTN, and he jacked us the bird!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/06/laughing.gif

Above all, when they recorded "Cleanse Fold & Manipulate" they perfected the art they were going to contribute.  It is for "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) we forgive Dalí for the "Hallucinogenic Torreador" (1969).  "The Hallucinogenic Toreador" is a richer, denser painting, not to mention being something like 10' x 13'.  However, it's the melted watches people remember Dalí for.

Anyway, I feel that way about later Skinny Puppy albums.  They could make good ones or the could make crummy ones.  It doesn't change the fact they made "Cleanse Fold & Manipulate" and it's a tremendous record.  I am forgiving of whatever Ministry does because they once made a record called 'Twitch' with Adrian Sherwood.  That was one of the first albums to pull me in the direction of Industrial -- and Dub Reggae via other Adrian Sherwood affiliates such as Mark Stewart* and the Maffia, Tackhead, and African Head Charge, and over to, Lee 'Scratch' Perry ad Mad Professor.

*NOT the Downtown composer/guitarist affiliated with Bang On A Can.

http://www.skowron007.dami-rz.pl/obrazki_w_sieci/skinny/1987_-_Cleanse,_Fold_and_Manipulate.jpg


I do *remember* industrial music... but I just don't remember it ever being anything close to mainstream or popular overall.   The only reason I ever heard of Skinny Puppy or Front 242 was because I had some friends who were into the goth scene and listened to that type of thing.   Their attitude, from what I can remember, was that they liked it because it wasn't mainstream.   I get the feeling that if they had made it into the Top 40 (which I can almost guarantee they never did), their fans would have declared them "sell-outs" and decided their music was crap.   Similar to what happened to Metallica following the release of their Black album.  I think that was a time where people found solace in liking things that weren't mainstream... and if something caught on, it was ruined for them.

I don't recall ever hearing anything I thought of as Industrial on the radio... it was more of an underground thing (in my area anyway) in the late 80's... if it ever really went mainstream after that, that is what I missed.  I would have guessed it went by the wayside along with all the rest of the good alternative & rock, thanks to Nirvana. 8-P

No, Skinny Puppy was never in the Top 40.  The Ogre screaming voice is too much for Top 40.

I do *remember* industrial music... but I just don't remember it ever being anything close to mainstream or popular overall.


Well, there was a lot of genre-splitting1 going on at the time.  About the only genre more prone to genre-splitting was techno.  (But in France, they called it Le Techno.  You don't wanna know what they do to drums in Belgium.)

I'd loosely go with the following:

Industrial (the original definition): music, not necessarily rhythmic or tonal, made by/from industrial processes (the classic "artists" like EN, TG, etc).  Maxwell's covered it in his explanations of the Dadaist movement and other artistic trends that led to its invention.

EBM: Electro-body-music - that synthesizer-based music characterized by heavy beats, sampling, loops, gravelly vocals, and lyrics that tended to be less about romance and more about cybernetic implants.  (F242, Skinny Puppy, etc)

EBM and the original "industrial" music style got lumped into each other and became what most people called "industrial" in the late 80s/very early 90s.  That loosely included some of the darker/moodier synthpop, a'la early (Twitch-era, as in Every Day Is Hallowe'en-style Ministry).  

Then came 1988-1989-1990.   Jourgenson discovered the electric guitar, and Ministry had The Land of Rape and Honey (as in Stigmata) and The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste (as in Burning Inside), his side project 1000 Homo DJs Supernaut, and NIN followed shortly thereafter with Head like a Hole.  

Cool Story, Bro: The first time I heard Ministry's Thieves on the radio, I thought "Wow, this is one solid thrash/punk band!  Who the hell are these guys?")

And that was pretty much it as far as the genre went.  Once it became acceptable to use a guitar and still be called "industrial", everyone wanted to try it.  You even had old-schol EBM acts like Front Line Assembly doing it (Millennium, 1994, where they even experimented with  rap on Victim of a Criminal), and the whole string of new acts that popped up in the wake of the change.  

Which brings us to this thread:

Industrial Rock: I've heard everyone from NIN to Rob Zombie to Marilyn Manson categorized as industrial rock.  I'd loosely categorize it as "Music made with both keyboards and guitars, and they sing about politics or blowing stuff up instead of hot chicks".  (Punk/thrash is political, but doesn't have keyboards.  Rock is the guitar-based genre where the songs are about that hot chick with the silicone implants.  Industrial rock is where the guy sings something political about the hot chick with the silicon implants :)

Which is a long way around the musical world that takes us back to your earlier bit about the Pups:  Skinny Puppy was industrial and never popular.  Reznor and Ministry were popular, and the music press called their music "industrial" because they really didn't know what else to call it.  You could dance to it, but it was too dystonic for synthpop, and too dystopic to be rock.  

And that subgenre of industrial gradually became the mainstream.  Don't matter what you call it, as long as you enjoy listening to it.

And now for the elephant in the living room:  Because they've done pretty much all three subgenres over the past 30+ years (really, the 84-86 demos are basically people using static generators and banging on random objects, although there's rhythm involved, and The Unrestrained Use Of Excessive Force is basically 7 minutes of ambient noise on 1989's UAIOE), KMFDM always was, is now, and always will be, industrial.

"I'm the slime oozing out of your TV set"
- KMFDM, quoting Zappa in UAIOE, title track, 1989

"Our music is sampled, totally fake, it's done by machines 'cos they don't make mistakes!"
 - KMFDM, Sucks, 1993

"German engineering, astounding ingenuity, over a decade of conceptual continuity!"
 - KMFDM, Inane, from Xtort, 1996.

"We are here and still the same, it's you that has become the joke!"
 - KMFDM, Feed Our Fame, from Hau Ruck, 2005.  The song opens up with their own audience screaming "KMFDM SUCKS!" :)

"We just want your cold, hard cash - get our hands into your stash
Now shut up, listen, and behold - finally, the truth be told!"
 - KMFDM, Bitches, from Blitz, 2009

If you're still reading this, you deserve a reward for making it to the end of yet another interminable Foo Bar post2.

1What are you doing reading this footnote?  Get back up there and read the whole post!

2That little MP3 up there was found on the artist's website.  In 1998, Society Burning got a bunch of folks together and did an industrial version of Pulp Fiction soundtrack in 1998, and Cyberpunk Fiction is just part of your reward for making it this far.

If you're still reading this, you deserve a reward for making it to the end of yet another interminable Foo Bar post2.




I read the entire thing.  I actually quite enjoy your posts. :)

All my life, I listened to all most sorts of music but was always so busy listening or looking for new music to listen to that I never bothered to learn about the artists and songs I already knew.

You can trace Industrial acts in music as far back as 1924 and George Antheil's "Ballet Mécanique."  Among the ensemble: Player pianos, electric bells, and airplane propellers.  Heck you can go back to the 1910s with the Italian Futurists, chief among them, Luigi Russolo" and the Intonarumori system.  

As some Industrial/Noise musicians keep revisiting, the Futurists called for an end to traditional musical forms for the sounds of factories and automobiles.  This process got much simpler in the 1940s when reel-to-reel tape came down in price.  Thus started the Musique Concrete/Tape Music movement starting with Pierre Schaeffer in Paris.  Then there are composer such as Stockhausen and Lucier whose experimental music is today in high critical acclaim.  The big concern I have is for keeping it alive.

You will notice Black Metal bands use similar kinds of distortion as Ogre did.  

By 1987 Ministry was a thrash metal band with some godawful Paul Barker computer stuff.  I had no use for the band after that happened.