Industrial Music Essay, Research Paper

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.