Electric Wizards JR Moores · Reaktion, 2021

CHAPTER 07

Industrial Rock

Machines, meat and the sound of the production line

45 works, in the order the book names them

  • 001/Album/1972

    Vol. 4

    Black Sabbath

    I had already heard the first three Black Sabbath albums, but by the time they got to Vol. 4 I was like, ‘ok, this is the shiznit, man.’ The first four or five Motörhead albums were over the top for me at the time, too.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 002/TV series

    Top of the Pops

    BBC

    The band’s earliest Top of the Pops appearances saw Dave Gahan looking less like a rock star or pop singer than a sommelier trying to upsell a bottle of overpriced champers to a tableful of lunching stockbrokers.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 003/Album/1982

    2x45

    Cabaret Voltaire

    A little later, when promoting 1982’s 2x45, Cabaret Voltaire would speak of maintaining the same essential approach while conducting themselves with greater expertise and in a more successful way, without necessarily having to sell out.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 004/Album

    CODE

    Cabaret Voltaire

    Nevertheless, the light and cheesy funk of 1987’s CODE for Parlophone was a step too far.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 005/Album

    Information Overload Unit

    SPK

    Recorded in London, SPK’S debut album, 1981’s Information Overload Unit, was an unholy mixture of hairdryer-like distortion, disturbing soundbites, primitive beats and general harsh noise.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 006/Album

    Leichenschrei

    SPK

    The following year’s Leichenschrei was similarly abstract, if a touch more listenable and better produced.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 007/Album

    Machine Age Voodoo

    SPK

    By 1984’s major label release Machine Age Voodoo, Revell had steered SPK into fairly cheesy synth-pop territory.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 008/Book

    The Rough Guide to Rock

    Edited by Jonathan Buckley

    ‘Death metal groups would have sold their souls to sound this evil,’ as Glenn Law put it in The Rough Guide to Rock when assessing 1984’s HOLE. Foetus’s sound had its clownish aspects too, prone as it was to segue into circus music, noirish jazz or the Batman theme at amusingly unexpected moments.
    Open in Goodreads ↗

  • 009/Album

    HOLE

    Foetus

    ‘Death metal groups would have sold their souls to sound this evil,’ as Glenn Law put it in The Rough Guide to Rock when assessing 1984’s HOLE. Foetus’s sound had its clownish aspects too, prone as it was to segue into circus music, noirish jazz or the Batman theme at amusingly unexpected moments.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 010/Composition

    Concerto for Voice and Machinery

    Einstürzende Neubauten

    In January 1984 members of Einstürzende Neubauten hosted a Concerto for Voice and Machinery at London’s ICA. The event also featured Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Frank ‘Fad Gadget’ Tovey.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 011/Album

    With Sympathy

    Ministry

    Jourgensen has disowned 1983’s With Sympathy and now refuses even to utter its title.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 012/Album/1988

    The Land of Rape and Honey

    Ministry

    This compositional breakthrough occurred during the making of 1988’s The Land of Rape and Honey and was inspired by the cut-up technique that Brion Gysin had introduced to William Burroughs, who then took to it with gusto for the composition of Naked Lunch (1959) and subsequent experimental novels.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 013/Book/1959

    Naked Lunch

    William S. Burroughs

    This compositional breakthrough occurred during the making of 1988’s The Land of Rape and Honey and was inspired by the cut-up technique that Brion Gysin had introduced to William Burroughs, who then took to it with gusto for the composition of Naked Lunch (1959) and subsequent experimental novels.
    Open in Goodreads ↗

  • 014/Documentary/2011

    Fix

    Doug Freel

    In the Ministry documentary Fix (2011), shot on tour in 1996, Jourgensen spends an inordinate amount of time wearing a metal helmet and shouting about being a Viking with all the rowdiness of somebody who probably hasn’t spent a great deal of time holed up in archaeological archives studying the vast history of the Norse peoples and the nuances of their ancient culture.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 015/Album

    Amerikkkant

    Ministry

    In 2018 Jourgensen set his targets on Donald Trump with the release of Amerikkkant.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 016/Album

    Pretty Hate Machine

    Nine Inch Nails

    Elsewhere, a lot of Pretty Hate Machine’s lyrics are blemished by an adolescent awkwardness.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 017/EP

    Broken

    Nine Inch Nails

    The Broken EP debuted this harsher and denser style on compact disc, but it was 1994’s The Downward Spiral that caused the whole industrial scene to explode into the mainstream.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 018/Album/1994

    The Downward Spiral

    Nine Inch Nails

    The Broken EP debuted this harsher and denser style on compact disc, but it was 1994’s The Downward Spiral that caused the whole industrial scene to explode into the mainstream.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 019/Album/1991

    Nevermind

    Nirvana

    Co-produced by Depeche Mode cohort Flood, The Downward Spiral was industrial rock’s answer to Nirvana’s Nevermind.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 020/Film

    Bad Boys

    Michael Bay

    Tracks by Germany’s KMFDM cropped up the following year on the soundtracks to movies including Bad Boys, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 021/Film

    Mortal Kombat

    Paul W. S. Anderson

    Tracks by Germany’s KMFDM cropped up the following year on the soundtracks to movies including Bad Boys, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 022/Film

    Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie

    Gisaburō Sugii

    Tracks by Germany’s KMFDM cropped up the following year on the soundtracks to movies including Bad Boys, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 023/Album/1996

    Filth Pig

    Ministry

    It’s to his credit that as the value of the industrial dollar escalated and imitators sprang up all around him, Al Jourgensen temporarily ditched his penchant for samplers and synthesizers when concocting the admirably monotonous sludge-metal aesthetic of Ministry’s Filth Pig (1996).
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 024/Album/1995

    Astro-Creep: 2000

    White Zombie

    White Zombie went ahead and recruited Nine Inch Nails’ keyboardist Charlie Clouser to assist them on Astro-Creep: 2000 (1995).
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 025/Album

    Machine + Soul

    Gary Numan

    Gary Numan had once been at the forefront of electronic pop innovation, but by 1992’s Machine + Soul he had taken his sound in a light funk direction and was showing a fondness for covering Prince hits rather badly.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 026/Album/1997

    Earthling

    David Bowie

    Even Numan’s onetime hero, the great David Bowie, got in on the action by adopting industrial techniques for his rock-meets-drum-and-bass fusion LP Earthling (1997).
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 027/Album

    Chinese Democracy

    Guns N’ Roses

    That same year, Guns N’ Roses commenced work on Chinese Democracy, an album that aspired to jump on the same bandwagon.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 028/Album

    The Fat of the Land

    The Prodigy

    Rock and metal influences crept increasingly into the work of the mischievous Essex outfit led by Liam Howlett, and this culminated in 1997’s multi-million selling The Fat of the Land.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 029/Film

    Akira

    Katsuhiro Otomo

    Led by Alec Empire, the Berlin band weren’t actually teenagers but they did dress like a futuristic motorcycle gang who’d risen from the pages of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and sounded like a balaclava-muffled desktop modem throwing an anti-capitalist hissy fit on Black Friday.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 030/Album/1985

    The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord

    Cabaret Voltaire

    Cabaret Voltaire interspersed the songs on The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord (1985) with snippets from Manson’s speeches and interviews.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 031/Documentary

    Charles Manson: The Final Words

    James Buddy Day

    Rob Zombie, who narrated the 2017 documentary Charles Manson: The Final Words, used to perform ‘Helter Skelter’ in concert with White Zombie.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 032/Album

    Antichrist Superstar

    Marilyn Manson

    Manson and his band of circus creeps had one half-decent album in them, 1996’s Antichrist Superstar, on which Trent Reznor and other members of Nine Inch Nails had such crucial input that one wonders if they should have been awarded most of the credit.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 033/Book

    The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

    Marilyn Manson with Neil Strauss

    Manson’s personal fame was boosted by an autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, ghosted by the same author whose Dirt would rekindle unmerited interest in the wretched hair metal outfit Mötley Crüe.
    Open in Goodreads ↗

  • 034/Book

    Dirt

    Mötley Crüe with Neil Strauss

    Manson’s personal fame was boosted by an autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, ghosted by the same author whose Dirt would rekindle unmerited interest in the wretched hair metal outfit Mötley Crüe.
    Open in Goodreads ↗

  • 035/Album

    Born Villain

    Marilyn Manson

    Born Villain, released in 2012, was supposed to see Manson freed from major label restrictions and back in the driving seat after being dropped from Interscope.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 036/Album

    The Fragile

    Nine Inch Nails

    Reflecting with hindsight after each subsequent release, Reznor would go on to describe 1999’s The Fragile as a cocaine-addled mess on which he recklessly attempted to spread what little he had to say across two CDS (‘I never want to make an album like that again’), while 2005’s With Teeth he regarded as containing several mistakes compounded by new management, too many cooks and a post-sobriety crisis of confidence.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 037/Album

    With Teeth

    Nine Inch Nails

    Reflecting with hindsight after each subsequent release, Reznor would go on to describe 1999’s The Fragile as a cocaine-addled mess on which he recklessly attempted to spread what little he had to say across two CDS (‘I never want to make an album like that again’), while 2005’s With Teeth he regarded as containing several mistakes compounded by new management, too many cooks and a post-sobriety crisis of confidence.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 038/Film

    Terminator

    James Cameron

    The reasons may have something in common with one explanation for why the first Terminator film was artistically superior to its more commercially successful sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, at least according to an essay by David Foster Wallace.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 039/Film

    Terminator 2: Judgment Day

    James Cameron

    The reasons may have something in common with one explanation for why the first Terminator film was artistically superior to its more commercially successful sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, at least according to an essay by David Foster Wallace.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 040/Film

    The Terminator

    James Cameron

    ‘There is a dense, greasy, marvellously machinelike look of The Terminator’s mechanized F/X;’ wrote the author, ‘there are the noirish lighting and Dexedrine pace that compensate ingeniously for the low budget and manage to establish a mood that is both exhilarating and claustrophobic.’ The second instalment, by comparison, consists of a few spectacular set pieces strung together by ‘empty and derivative, pure mimetic polycelluloid’.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 041/Film

    Cats

    Tom Hooper

    Superhero ‘universes’ are so chock-full of crossover opportunities that every Marvel or DC sequel-slash-reboot now resembles a conveyor belt of character cameos worryingly reminiscent of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s plotless Cats.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 042/Album

    Further Down the Spiral

    Nine Inch Nails

    At age thirteen, An was introduced to NIN via the unorthodox entry point of Further Down the Spiral, a companion album containing remixes of tracks from The Downward Spiral overseen by artists including J. G. Thirlwell, Coil and Aphex Twin.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 043/Album/2018

    Shadow World

    Lana Del Rabies

    At the time of writing, the highlight of her discography has been the 2018 Lana Del Rabies cassette Shadow World, on which the blueprint of Further Down the Spiral has been run through a mangle and crawled out the other side as a semi-abstract and powerfully rhythmic clatter of post-NIN horror music.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 044/Album/2016

    Fetish Bones

    Moor Mother

    ‘Creation Myth’, the opening track on Moor Mother’s record Fetish Bones (2016), has been called ‘an 18-rated Black History Month condensed into five minutes’.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 045/Film

    The Truman Show

    Peter Weir

    But to get the message heard by the world . . . it’s like The Truman Show – we can’t break through the bubble.’ Moor Mother, at least, has made some headway.
    Open in IMDb ↗