Industrial Metal

Machines in the rhythm section

The metal ruled by a machine, industrial metal, is assembled on sequencers and samplers as much as on amplifiers, and it loops a repeating guitar figure over programmed drums, splices in tape noise, found voices and synthesiser lines, and grinds the singer through distortion until the human voice sounds like one more piece of plant on the factory floor. The pulse never drifts. Nobody gets tired.

What separates industrial metal from its neighbours is who keeps time. In thrash and groove metal a drummer pushes and pulls against the beat; here a drum machine, an Alesis HR-16 in the case of Godflesh, holds it dead level while overdriven bass and distorted guitar pile mass on top, so the weight comes from repetition rather than speed, the way a drop hammer flattens a steel billet by landing on the same spot all shift. Many bands later put a human back on the kit. The machine stayed in the mix.

Industrial metal's factory map

The map begins where dance music met the guitar. Cut in London and Chicago, released by Sire in October 1988 and named after a civic motto printed on a souvenir mug from a Saskatchewan town, The Land of Rape and Honey is where the Chicago machine run by Al Jourgensen, Ministry, tore the synth-pop off its own sound and bolted metal guitars into cut up tape. Justin Broadrick, fresh out of Napalm Death, answered with Godflesh. Nine Inch Nails and Ministry's Psalm 69 then carried the method to platinum.

From there the industrial metal bands split along the metal each one fed on. Fear Factory and Nailbomb fused the machine with death and thrash metal. Neue Deutsche Härte, a name the German press coined after Rammstein released Herzeleid in 1995, laid it under German lyrics and staccato groove riffs on ground Oomph! had already cleared with Sperm the year before, and black metal took it in through Mysticum, Samael, Dødheimsgard, Thorns and Aborym. The Kovenant called their version cyber metal.

The confusion runs mostly toward nu metal, which borrowed the samples and the loops but kept a human groove, and toward the late 1990s chart crossovers of Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, whose Antichrist Superstar and Hellbilly Deluxe reached number 3 and number 5 on the Billboard 200. Prong and Fear Factory work the groove side of the fence. The test for industrial metal stays simple. If the drummer plays like a machine, or is one, the record belongs here.

Where to start

Seven industrial metal albums, from the tape splices of 1988 to a Norwegian black metal band that swallowed the machine whole.

• Ministry The Land of Rape and Honey Sire, 1988

  Heavy guitars spliced into tape noise at Southern Studios and Chicago Trax, Al Jourgensen's first record with Paul Barker, and a gold record by 1996.

• Godflesh Streetcleaner Earache, 1989

  An Alesis HR-16, G. C. Green's overdriven bass and Justin Broadrick's guitar, a record Fear Factory, Neurosis and Isis all took notes from.

• Prong Cleansing Epic, 1994

  Terry Date producing, Paul Raven of Killing Joke on bass, and "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck" in heavy MTV rotation.

• Samael Passage Century Media, 1996

  The Swiss band leaving black metal behind for keyboards, programmed drums by Xy and cosmic lyrics, with a video on Headbangers Ball.

• Rammstein Sehnsucht Motor Music, 1997

  Number one in Germany, "Engel" and "Du hast" as singles, and the only album sung entirely in German to go platinum in the United States.

• Fear Factory Obsolete Roadrunner, 1998

  A concept record set in 2076, where machines have made mankind obsolete, gold in the United States and Australia, and a later edition carrying Gary Numan on "Cars".

• Dødheimsgard 666 International Moonfog, 1999

  Vicotnik and Aldrahn welding black metal to industrial beats and electronic interludes, in AllMusic's reading a record bound to frustrate purists.