[Industrial Philosophy]
The industrial subculture is
probably not known for being philisophical or profound. Is there
any real depth to music which largely consists of distorted noise
and the sounds of jackhammers and beating on scrap metal? However
we at Electric Metal believe that you can be both a rivethead
*and* hold some intelligent theoretical ideas about the state of
the world. This is based on these ideas:
* People in the Western
world are slaves to capitalism. You get a job (well, maybe) just
for the money, not because it's your 'vocation' in life any more.
That job takes up most of your time and dictates your whole
lifestyle, pretty much. People are therefore enslaved by the
chains of industrialised society. When their bosses say jump,
they ask how high. The sounds of the mass production line becomes
the soundtrack to their lives. Everyone is dancing to the beats
of industrial machinery. Rivetheads just take this idea
literally, as well as metaphorically.
* Expanding on this idea,
basically we're powerless to change our position in life. Sure,
we can quit one crappy job in a burger bar and get another one in
telesales, but basically life sucks and there's not a lot we can
do about it. We're all just little cogs in a big machine. Any cog
who bitches about it gets replaced straight away with another
cog. As mentioned in the Industrial Fashion section, you can
reflect this idea by wearing cogs as jewellery. If anyone asks
you why you're such a cheap ass that you made your jewellery out
of scrap metal, instead of kicking the crap out of them you can
actually make a profound statement about this and feel all
superior in doing so. And then kick the crap out of them.
* Plus of course plenty of
bands who get labelled as industrial do often have a very
philisophical and/or political slant to their lyrics and themes.
Even those that don't appear to be particularly profound and/or
musically gifted, especially the earlier pioneers of industrial
music, are still very relevant too, because basically making
"anti-music" is a nice big "f*** you" gesture
to the music industry which likes to churn out one manufactured
pop star after another. The music industry is a very big part of
the money grabbing capitalist system mentioned above, so
subverting and reisisting their ideas of the music we should be
buying and listening to is basically fighting against the bigger
system. OK, so no one's really gonna take any notice but still,
it's better than passively lapping up the crap they want to feed
us.
This dystopian and somewhat
depressing view of the world was brought to you by Electric
Metal.
Resist the system. ;-)
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Copyright © L. Bond
2003-2004
