Five genres of industrial you may not know about

OK here I’m going to talk about five little-known cousins of the big happy family of industrial music.

1 - Found Sounds
Now some snotty-nosed industrial purists might insist that Found Sounds (aka Field Recordings) is in fact a sub-genre of ambient music, or experimental. But we know what I think of industrial purists. Anyway, Found Sounds is music constructed entirely from sounds recorded in the surrounding environment, as opposed to made on a synthesizer, guitar or whatever. These people usually then distort, effect, and re-sample the material until it sounds totally unlike the original source, but they'll be fanatical about not introducing any other “artificial” sounds into the mix. It’s a philosophical thing I guess. They can thus produce albums sounding dark and creepy, harsh and noisy, or something in between, but generally it just sounds kinda weird (and often quite good).
Notable albums: Notime’s “Living Planet” and “Dying Planet” (side project of power noise legend Converter!), Wilt’s “Radio 1940” (good double cd of music made from broken radio sounds), Sleep Research Facility’s “Dead Weather Machine” (made entirely from the sounds of a broken air conditioner).

2 - Breakcore
Another genre that will be claimed by people from other camps (mainly techno and drum’n’bass), breakcore is techno or power noise having an epileptic fit. Forget four to the floor, in fact forget structures, bars, time signatures, or having some clue where the next beat is going to fall, this music is all over the place. You can’t even give it a BPM (at least I certainly can’t). Some call it random button mashing on a drum machine, some call it high art, some just like to take drugs and dance around in a crazy fashion to it. Personally, it doesn’t do a whole lot for me, and smacks of elitism and being cool for its own sake; nevertheless, there are some interesting or fun moments to be found here. Surprisingly, quite a few of the respected breakcore artists are from Australia, though it doesn’t have much of a following (I think some of their shows have as many punters as performers). Breakcore had a very brief moment in the spotlight when a video of someone jumping around to Venetian Snare’s “Dance like you’re selling nails” went somewhat viral.

Notable albums: Venetian Snares’ “Meathole” (this guy is considered the best in show), Xanopticon’s “Luminal Space” (or is this glitchcore? Bah who knows or cares), anything by Enduser (he’s not bad).

3 - Power Electronics
OK this is truly crazy stuff. Out of all the forms of music humans have made through the ages, Power Electronics is bested only by Japanoise in its outright insanity, abrasiveness and aggression. The formula is pretty simple; one very angry man (it’s always a man), screaming about terrorists, murder, or murdering terrorists, through about 12 distortion and delay pedals, over a blistering, grinding wall of noise. Fun stuff! There was a point around 2002 - 03 when there were some genuinely good people doing this music, but it quickly became overpopulated with feeble imitators and stupid fat serial-killer fetishists. There was a point in my life when this music made sense to me. I’m since a happier and more well-adjusted person so it doesn’t do much for me anymore, but I dust off my NTT or Propergol albums every now and then.
Notable albums: Strom.Ec’s “Neural Architect” (very good and underrated, excellent production!), Propergol’s “United States”, “Renegade” or “Program Vengeance” (legendary French act, still going strong), Navicon Torture Technologies’ “Church of Dead Girls” (mind-shattering, relentless, the final word in power electronics; nothing will probably ever beat this).

4 - Death Industrial
If Power Electronics is the torture chamber of industrial music, Death Industrial is the dungeon underneath where they throw the bodies after they’re finished with them. This music comes almost exclusively from Sweden, is released almost exclusively on the cult Swedish label Cold Meat Industry, and is a dark pit of despair. Sonically, it is a combination of the abrasiveness of power electronics with the grim atmosphere of dark ambient. There are rarely vocals or samples used however, and pretty much everything is drenched in reverb for that genuine catacomb feel. There are very few people making this music anymore (its brief heyday, if it could be said to have one, was in the late nineties / early noughties); even the undisputed king of death industrial, Brighter Death Now (aka Roger Karmanik, who runs Cold Meat Industry) now produces music that is basically power electronics.
Notable albums: Brighter Death Now’s “Necrose Evangelicum”, “The Slaughterhouse”, “Pain in Progress” (all classics), Archon Satani’s “Of Gospels Lost and Forsaken” (double cd of this pioneering group), Megaptera’s “Curse of the Scarecrow” (awesome).

5 - Tribal Industrial
The new and not very popular style is one of the most interesting and enjoyable things happening in music at the moment; the unlikely wedding of industrial with tribal beats. The cult Belgian artist Ah Cama Sotz had been toying with this stuff for years, but things really took off when fellow Belgian loon This Morn Omina released “Seven Years of Famine” on Ant-Zen, including its unlikely club hit, One Eyed Man.

Both of these artists have continued to put out excellent releases, but very few have followed in their footsteps. Maybe that’s a good thing? Power Electronics got swamped by shitty unoriginal bands trying to be the next Slogun or Propergol and failing miserably. It’s probably for the best that the number of bands doing this style you can count on one or two hands, because they’re all awesome.
Notable albums: This Morn Omina’s “Seven Years of Famine” (or pretty much anything else; this guy is the man), Ah Cama Sotz’s “La Procesion de la Sangre” (or just about anything else), Tzolk'in’s “Haab”.