Industrial music takes its name from Industrial Records, the label Throbbing Gristle set up in Britain in 1976 to release their own work and that of kindred spirits. Its first release was the group’s debut LP, The Second Annual Report, pressed in 786 copies, and the motto industrial music for industrial people, credited to the American artist Monte Cazazza, gave a whole genre its name. The label went on to issue records by Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Clock DVA and William S. Burroughs.
The early industrial groups treated sound as a means of shock and investigation rather than entertainment: tape collage, found recordings, crude electronics and long, abrasive drones. Sheffield’s Cabaret Voltaire helped shape the style in the late 1970s, and SPK and Einstürzende Neubauten expanded it in the early 1980s. That vocabulary passed directly into drone culture: Lustmord came out of this milieu and worked with SPK, and the line runs on into dark ambient, power electronics and much heavy drone.