Some bands use electric guitars to create heavy metal riffs, while others physically abuse the instrument to create the harshest, most abrasive sounds possible.
Either way, industrial metal is much more aggressive than traditional industrial, which makes it appealing to metal and alternative artists who are used to harsh guitar sounds.
Industrial metal is always harsh and focused on fear. It conveys a sense of being cut off from the rest of the world by thick walls of noise, whether the anger is directed at the individual or at society as a whole.
By incorporating death, doom, and black metal into industrial music, the artists do not reject melodic riffing – “hooks”, melodic vocal parts (even if they are unrecognizably dissected by distortion), basic chorus and couplet patterns, hypnotic rhythms, and so on.
Industrial metal bands are still the most uncompromising type of “alternative” music because they popularize industrial ideas.
Industrial Metal Bands
- Their music is extremely heavy, harsh and “military”, forcing the listener to stand at attention (Ministry, Fear Factory, Filter, Tool, Godflesh, etc.). The Ministry was the first band to popularize industrial metal in the late 1980s, pioneering its signature sound of relentlessly repeated pounding guitar riffs, electronics, samples, and distorted vocals.
- Some of them don’t mind experimenting with the structure of the sound, luring the listener into the inner realm of “industrial psychedelia” (Nine Inch Nails).
- Other artists with an industrial focus are more concerned with the aesthetic aspects of the activity (Marilyn Manson and others).
- However, it was NIN, with Trent Reznor’s knack for catchy melodies and the diversity of his work, that broke into the mainstream with their songs in the early 1990s. At the beginning of NIN’s popularity, many bands that sounded like them began to play on alternative radio stations. By the end of the decade, many alternative metal bands had taken ideas from various industrialists and made their own violent music.
