Essay/Term paper: Industrial music

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Culture

Industrial Music


Rock and roll is dead. It's a fact. During the eighties romp of techno
and fashion bands, people forgot all about it. In the late eighties and early
nineties alternative music tried to save rock and roll, but it was too big of a
category. If a band didn't sing country or rap, they were considered
alternative. Every alternative band had their own idea of music, and it all
spread apart, running farther away from rock. Finally, when alternative became
more defined and broke off into categories, one specific type of alternative
offspring, industrial music, made the best attempt in a decade to revive the
long forgotten era of rock and roll. The only problem with this new rock is
that it was angered from being forgotten for over a decade and now it's back,
filled with angst and hatred. Industrial music has weaved rock and roll with
evil and misery.
The founder and leader of the industrial revolution is the band Nine Inch
Nails. Most people do not classify Nine Inch Nails as a band though. The
writer, producer, lead vocalist, keyboarder and guitarist of the band is Trent
Reznor. For the past two years, Trent has been the artist of the year in Spin
magazine and NIN has been the number two band of the year. In 1994, Nine Inch
Nails was announced MTV's band of the year. This was a great honor because MTV
spends most of it's time with rap and hip-hop. When NIN's first album came out
in 1989, it was mostly rock and roll with a techno twist, containing songs full
of depressing, suicidal lyrics. Then as the next two albums arose, Trent
became more evil with his music, using machines and pretty much anything he
could find that would make his music sound angered and irritated. This hard,
twisted music, backed up by words of pure hatred started the industrial ball
rolling.
One band that has tried to lighten up industrial just a tad is KMFDM, a
German industrial band. The band name stands for Klein Mitlied Fuhr Das
Merhiet, which is Little pity for the tyranny. Instead of using the suicidal,
evil lyrics, KMFDM has used their music as more of a philosophical
communication. They sing about how screwed up they think the world is and how
much we are controlled by people we didn't know existed. The lyrics may sound
depressing still, but the music is a little more upbeat. KMFDM got rid of the
tortured machine sounds and added horns and synthesizers, making the music
sound more digital and less like grinding gears. Doing this, KMFDM was able to
appeal to a larger group.
After the invasion of rap and hip-hop, rock and roll was never the same,
and when it tried to make a comeback, it exploded into numerous little musical
categories, all with rock components, but none with the same hard flare of the
original. But now, rock and roll is back, and it's mad as hell. Industrial is
the closest thing to rock that we have, just a little more demented. Now that
people are getting bored of the same old pointless rap songs, all of the little
alternative categories are getting looked into more seriously and industrial
music is thriving, creating a new future for the once destroyed rock and roll.