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Industrial

Hull to Hackney, 1976

Throbbing Gristle

Throbbing Gristle grew out of COUM Transmissions, a performance art group that Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti started in Hull and moved to Hackney in 1973. There they met Chris Carter and Peter Christopherson, and the four built a studio they called the Death Factory. The band's public debut came at the ICA in October 1976, inside the COUM show Prostitution, and its sexual content got them called "wreckers of civilisation" by the Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn. Their own label, Industrial Records, gave a whole genre its name. The first album was The Second Annual Report, in 1977. After a show at the Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco on 29 May 1981, they announced the split by postcard.

London, 1982

Coil

Coil started in London in 1982 as a solo idea of John Balance's and soon became the project he shared with his partner Peter Christopherson, formerly of Throbbing Gristle. The two of them were the only constant members, with collaborators coming and going. Horse Rotorvator, from 1986, took its title from a dream Balance had about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Its cover shows the bandstand in Regent's Park, hit in the 1982 bombings. They wrote a score for the first Hellraiser film and withdrew it when they suspected it would not be used. Balance died after a fall at their home in Weston-super-Mare in November 2004. Christopherson finished The Ape of Naples in 2005 and died in Bangkok in 2010.

The Final Academy, 1982

Psychic TV

Psychic TV made its debut in 1982 at The Final Academy, a multimedia event staged in Manchester and Brixton. Co-founder Alex Fergusson left early in 1987 after disagreements with management. The worst trouble came in 1992. A Channel 4 Dispatches programme claimed a video showed ritual child abuse, and the Obscene Publications Squad raided Genesis P-Orridge's home and carted off tonnes of artwork. The footage turned out to be an early-1980s video art piece, and Channel 4 retracted. P-Orridge was in Thailand doing famine relief at the time, stayed away from Britain for years and settled in New York. PTV3 followed in 2003, with media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in the band.

Chelmsford, Mute, 1987

Nitzer Ebb

Nitzer Ebb were three school friends from Essex, Bon Harris, Douglas McCarthy and David Gooday, who started the band around Chelmsford in 1982. The early singles came out on their own label, Power of Voice Communications, until Mute signed them, with Geffen taking care of America. That Total Age, produced by Phil Harding, arrived in May 1987. That same year they opened the European leg of Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses tour. Ebbhead, in 1991, was produced by Flood with Depeche Mode's Alan Wilder. After 1995 they went quiet for over a decade. They regrouped in 2006, made a comeback album in 2010 and again opened for Depeche Mode across Europe and Russia. McCarthy died on 11 June 2025.

Kevin Martin, London

God

God was Kevin Martin's London band, a jazzcore group that ran from 1987 to 1996 and sat somewhere between grindcore and industrial metal. Martin sang and played tenor saxophone. Justin Broadrick of Godflesh produced early releases and then joined. Possession, recorded at Gateway Studio in Kingston and released by Virgin in 1992, used a big lineup: Tim Hodgkinson on alto sax and bass clarinet, John Edwards on double bass, and Lou Ciccotelli and Scott Kiehl both on drums. The Anatomy of Addiction came out on Big Cat in 1994, again produced by Martin. Bill Laswell and John Zorn were among the fans. Martin kept working with Broadrick in Techno Animal and Ice, and later recorded as The Bug.

Broken Flag to Crucial Blast

Ramleh

Ramleh's first cassette, in 1982, was inspired by the hanging of Adolf Eichmann at Ramleh Prison in Israel. In recent years Gary Mundy and Anthony di Franco have run two versions side by side, a rock band with a drummer and a drummerless electronic setup. Circular Time, on Crucial Blast in 2015, ran close to two hours and was their first full-length rock record in nearly 20 years, with Martyn Watts as the new drummer. It was pieced together from about ten years of sessions around ideas of reincarnation and eternal return. The Great Unlearning followed in 2019 as a double LP on Nashazphone, an Egyptian label, with Stuart Dennison back and Philip Best and Sarah Froelich of Consumer Electronics taking part.

Vancouver, Nettwerk, 1986

The Tear Garden

The Tear Garden started after cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy worked as sound engineer on a Canadian tour by Edward Ka-Spel of the Pink Dots. Their records came out on Nettwerk from 1986. The first album was mostly recorded at Mushroom Studios in Vancouver in June 1987, with Key and Dave Ogilvie producing. Skinny Puppy's Dwayne Goettel and Nivek Ogre helped out, and from 1992 more Pink Dots members joined in. It stayed a studio project for decades, apart from two appearances during Skinny Puppy's Head Trauma tour in 1988. A new album came out on Artoffact in 2025, and they finally toured North America in September and October 2026.

Patrick Miller, San Francisco, 1979

Minimal Man

Patrick Miller was born in Glendale, California, in 1952 and studied silk-screen printing at Sonoma State. He moved to San Francisco in 1979, and Minimal Man began as a way to make soundtracks. The first trio was Miller on vocals and synthesizer, Andrew Baumer on bass and saxophone, and Lliam Hart on drums. Their 1981 debut on Subterranean was chaotic and noisy, with Miller screaming over slow, heavy backing. His images of a blank, bandaged, mask-like head appeared on the flyers and sleeves. In 1985 he settled in Brussels and often worked with Tuxedomoon, who had moved there earlier. He later worked as a set dresser in Los Angeles and died at home in Eagle Rock in December 2003.

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