It once felt like the future of music and yet still seems like an underappreciated genre.
With the benefit of hindsight, it seems overlooked with the glaring exception of Nine Inch Nails, one of the most loved rock bands of the time and maybe Ministry who for a time hit mainstream.
There are of course bands that flirted with big time success- KMFDM, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and Skinny Puppy to name a few.
It’s not that Industrial went away, it’s influence on Metal is apparent in the next generation of bands like Marilyn Manson, Rammstein and Fear Factory.
But here’s the thing, while Industrial and EBM may feel fringe. Turn on the radio for 20 minutes and its influence is there - in sound, in iconography, and in fashion. Industrial, like Punk, seems like it is somehow stuck in time. I find myself online talking to industrial music fans and though it even slips my mind from time to time, I really do enjoy the genre.
What I have learned is that industrial fans seem to be the nicest people in the world. Yes, ironically, they may dress like nihilists out of a Philip K Dick story, but they seem so much less toxic than many fandoms.
Which takes me back 30 years. EBM has always been on the margins. Maybe not so if you lived in a large city, but finding likewise folks was a real hunt. I always joked my hometown wasn’t big enough to be able to differentiate between punks, goths, rivetheads, hippies, drama club kids and ravers because it was so so small that it only had enough room for “us vs them”. Even the metal heads and the punks hung out together in my small town.
And I am glad that I did find someone who was into the culture heavily. That could tell me about something deeper than the Wax Trax bands. I think you could only find a real scene in large towns like Chicago. Now, likely I would have done well myself. I did see a lot of industrial and EBM bands in the 90s - a truly enviable amount.
Still nothing beats connecting with a human being over music and hearing things for the first time .
It was the first time I had heard Ryuchi Sakamoto and Yellow Magic Orchestra. It was also the first time I heard Danish musician Klaus Larson who was making music as Laether Strip and also as Klute. He was but one musician that were on the Cleopatra and Metropolis record labels- labels that focused on electro industrial music at the time.
I have since lost contact with him but in that “small world coincidence” ran into him ten years after we had lost touch.
I really haven’t thought of Laether Strip either until I started frequenting Industrial music websites again. He has been incredibly prolific.
It’s challenging for artists to get listens, so I am not surprised that he has went tribute heavy.
There are seven albums of all covers titled "An Appreciation"- hitting New Wave, Goth, Punk and NDW influences. Then there's his seemingly infinite tribute albums- Skinny Puppy, Soft Cell, Godflesh, Ministry, Curve, Depeche Mode and countless others. Besides those cover albums, remix albums and more EPs than I can count, I put him at roughly 26 (and again, I may have this number too low) studio albums of original material as Laether Strip since he started 1990.
An incredibly neverending catalog of songs.
In 2025, he has two new albums- one of new material ( Fucking Perfect) and one a song by song cover of the Cure’s Pornography (A Tribute to the Cure). Both have been fairly well received in genre circles.
Klute (now renamed Klutae because of a similar named band) went on a slight hiatus but their next album - their 6th has been announced. I have heard good things about those records as well.
Like gangster rap, a lot of industrial EBM is stuck in some of the 90s tropes, in this case, there’s a lot of in-your-face hyper sexuality and blasphemous shock. The last Klutae album for example, being called Queer for Satan.
Still, par for the course for genre listeners. Fucking Perfect isn’t an album that will garner a big audience or be held more regarded than the 90s albums. But it’s still quite good for a record in its genre.
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