As Al was turned on more and more by the rock aspect of music, other tones came into play in the industrial genre. The days of pure noisiness had passed into harsh dance music akin to new wave, but now came bands like Nine Inch Nails, that fused the mainstream rock and industrial in the most palatable fashion.
Most industrial fans, having their own favorite subgenres, their own musical agendas, and an unusual subcultural elitism, will often refute Nine Inch Nail's true claim to being industrial. The same would later become true of such other mainstream successes as Marilyn Manson, Stabbing Westward, and Gravity Kills, but the integration of industrial textures and ideals into the music of these bands is undeniable and such nay-saying can usually be attributed to a fear of losing the "underground" to the "mainstream", a fear of a loss of individuality by having it co-opted by the masses.
This industrial-rock revolution bred many subgenres, such as synthcore, torture tech, and coldwave, none of which seemed to possess the marketability of Nine Inch Nails. Unlike other genres of music, industrial was not dragged into the daylight by one pioneering artist, like rock was exposed by Elvis or pop by the Beatles, but instead left the underground buried. This is almost unheard of in all other musical genres, but seems to be the fate of industrial music.
The late 1990's have seen the rise of EBM, an electronic dance-oriented form of industrial music, stemming off from the school of Front 242. Bands such as Funker Vogt, Velvet Acid Christ, Haujobb, VNV Nation, Noxious Emotion, and :wumpscut: have picked up where Front 242 left off during an early-1990's disbanding and hit the dancefloors hard with electro beats and distorted synths.
America's industrial music scene still flounders in the wake of the collapse of most of America's independent industrial labels. The mid- to late-1990's saw the disbanding of a plethora of very promising industrial-rock, synthcore, and coldwave acts that has left America very barren of industrial music, leaving the EBM of Europe as the only strong choice for industrial fans, though a growing number of fans reject any guitar-based or rock-oriented industrial music as being "true" industrial.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Ryan Speck's Industrial Music topic, please visit the Discussions page.