I'm putting this page up to give the people who haven't been listening to Industrial for 10-25 years some of the history and a loose definition of industrial.

I could write a book about this but I have better things to do with my time. I'm gonna sum this up real quick. You can debate any point I'm making here. If you disagree, keep it to yourself, I'm to busy to argue this with you unless you're a hot girl. If you make a good point I might modify this page, if you don't, you won't receive a reply.

Industrial culture really defies a simple definition, but I'm gonna put this forth here as a starting point which I think encompasses the commonalties across the four phases.

So here's my definition, which I reserve the right to modify at my discretion.
INDUSTRIAL: Avant Garde and often electronic music which emphasizes an anti-music element in it's form and structuralism

Industrial is so varied that I think it easiest to organize it by it's four evolutionary changes.

Phase One: The Avant Garde Beginning (1970's)

It all started with Throbbing Gristle, and the record label they started called Industrial Records. Monte Cazazza a contemporary and friend to the TG crew coined the term Industrial music. Cazazza stated, "industrial music for industrial people," meaning that we no longer exist in a society in which blues-based music is really applicable, but that the society in which we live and die is cold, emotionless, industrial and devoid of any meaning or redeeming qualities. Cazzazza like Genesis P. Orridge was a performance artist. Orridge led the experimental and really cutting edge Throbbing Gristle. Phase one Industrial is most easily described as Experimental music that really incorporated what was at the time, anti-music elements such as synths, tape loops, odd electronic manipulations to create something really new. These bands did things with equipment that you weren't really supposed to do and got something really new out, something that probably scared most of their contemporaries. Most people at these early shows were probably punks who dropped out of art school.
These bands put drums through pitch shifters, created songs out of skipping records through overdriven amps and all kinds of weird stuff.

Examples: Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire, NON

Phase Two: Bands who took the term literally

Phase Two is largely comprised of bands who took the term literally, and made their music out of Industrial elements and tools. Einsturzende Neubauten is the most famous of these bands. A museum has displayed many of the screwed up instruments that they have made to create their music. They put hammers and saws and taut steel cables in their setup and hit them rhythmically to create an urban tribal angst that transcended it's form.

Examples: Einsturzende Neubauten, Missing Foundation (They would deny being Industrial)

Phase Three: Pop Industrial

This is the phase you're most familiar with. This is the one that's easiest to dance to. In the 80's a new generation of Industrial started. This phase is characterized by an aggressive use of synths and drum machines. This is a hard genre to define, because it's form is shared with hip-hop and dance music. What made this phase different was again it experimental cutting edge, and it innovative compositional structures. Again the better bands made their equipment do things it was never intended to do. In the early nineties phase three was replaced by phase four industrial, but there has since been a strong backlash against phase four and a strong return to a dominant phase three. The more popular bands in this genre were typically vary dark in atmosphere, but there were "happy" industrial bands such as early Meat Beat Manifesto.

Examples: Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, Front Line Assembly, Front 242

Phase Four: Phase Three assimilates guitar

This is the one that people tend to get the most pissed of about.
Some will argue that this isn't even industrial at all.
It is because of Phase Four industrial bands, that many rock bands that have drum machines and synths think they're industrial. I put forth here that Phase Four is a valid form of Industrial, but that few bands are really worthy of the classification. Most bands that went phase four are now rock bands (Ministry, KMFDM) but their early ventures into this territory remain industrial.
Phase four industrial was popularized by an identifiable bunch. Al Jourgeson led the way with his the Mind is a terrible thing to taste album. This was Ministry's follow up to the very successful Land of Rape and Honey Album. Back then moshing was cool and wasn't full of macho poseurs trying to prove themselves. This album gave the kids plenty to mosh to. Moshing which had been stolen from the punks, became a new Industrial craze, but the thing was, you had to have the right music. Ministry's thieves was perfect. Back then if you saw people moshing to NIN's Head like a hole, you made fun of them. Eventually Posers ruined moshing by moshing to everything like Siouxsie and The Banshees and Depeche Mode. But in the beginning, what you wanted was HARD industrial. Everybody wanted HARD industrial like the new guitar driven Ministry and KMFDM who followed Ministry's footsteps with Godlike. This phase died hard although some of the bands that remain in this genre are still interesting, innovative and plainly just kick ass.

Examples: Ministry (Land of Rape and Honey to Psalm 69 era), Later KMFDM, BILE (I think the best phase four industrial band)

At the end of phase four, Industrial which had made an incredible rise in popularity, was killed by the three headed onslaught of the competing genres of Alternative, Techno and Manchester. If these three forms had waited a year to become popular, Industrial really would have arrived. Sadly the industrial scenes around the US were decimated by this onslaught to the point that most people didn't even know what Industrial was.

After phase four died Industrial went back underground. Industrial is definitely making a comeback.

So what about Phase 5?

Well things changed between 1998, when this article was written, and 2002 when this update was written. Techno-trance-ebm became hugely popular, and some people started calling it Industrial. Those people couldn't be more wrong because these bands have no commonality with the previous evolutions of Industrial that this Techno-trance-ebm doesn't also have in common with techno and mainstream boy bands. Without the core aesthetics, a genre has no definition. Every genre is defined by it boundries.

I don't think a phase 5 really exists yet, but it's coming.
Here's what I think the future of Industrial is.

The future of Industrial is a return to it's past. Industrial has suffered it's biggest identity crisis in the last four years. This crisis was caused by the slew of techno-trance-pop EBM bands that have been calling themselves industrial, and threw massive disinformation campaigns confusing thousands of listeners about what the nature of Industrial is. This far outweighs the guitar industrial crisis of the mid 90's. The result of this identity crisis will be hardliners bringing Industrial back to it's roots, albeit with a higher technical advantage. Industrial noise, similiar to rhythmic noise will be the next evolution of Industrial, because it's ties back to the roots of Industrial like SPK, TG, and NON. The noise genre is a diverse one with ambient noise, powernoise, powerelectronics etc., but much noise isn't industrial. Noise is a genre on it's own, even though it's roots started in Industrial music. Much noise is really techno, so a sub genre of noise, will become the future of Industrial, and that will be Industrial noise, not noise Industrial. I've noticed that some bands, like Ah Coma Sotz, which aren't even noisey, say they're noise bands, when they're really Industrial, probably to avoid being confused with pseudo industrial bands like APOP. The fifth phase of Industrial be marked by more advanced composition and sequencing than rhythmic noise. It will also incorporate the anti-commercial underground edge that is required to maintain an avant garde true industrial edge.

That's my 2 cents. We'll see in 5 years if I'm right.