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.