Electric Metal: Info

[Info Page]

So... firstly, welcome to Electric Metal. As of March 2004 Electric Metal is 2 years old. Yay for Electric Metal. I don't know exactly how many visitors we've had (since I didn't put a counter on for several months). Then the geocites counter crapped out. It was at least 1200. 1200 might be nothing to many sites, but I'm proud of that. Anyway, it's probably actually well over that now since some pages which other sites have linked to have had over 1000 hits.

Electric Metal is primarily devoted to industrial & experimental electronic music and culture, or those bands and artists who tend to use computers, synths or scrap metal and power tools as their primary instruments, and those crazy people who actually like that kind of racket. :-)

Electric Metal started off as a Yahoo! group in early 2002, expanding in March that year onto the website of the same name. The aim was originally to provide a place to discuss industrial, electronica and similar music. But my baby evolved and grew up a little. Now it is devoted to industrial and similar music *and* culture. It's just an excuse for me to talk about any random crap that interests me I guess, as long as it have some vague relevance in content, themes or anything else to industrial and electronic music.

Electric Metal is not a fansite, it's not only devoted to music and it's not an official site for any of the artists featured.

Electric Metal is purely a hobby of mine, run for no personal gain, not affiliated in any way with any of the artists featured and basically rather pointless but it helps to keep me sane...

[Q & A]

What's in the name?

- Electric Metal was just a name I plucked from thin air (actually a song title I made up for a fictional industrial band in a novel I started to write) which summed up most of the music I tend to listen to pretty well and could pretty accurately apply to everything from industrial to IDM to noise to gothic to grindcore and a lot of stuff in between. It was also a more neutral, less specific name than calling it something like industrial world or rivets-r-us. Probably someone used the name before me. I don't know. It's just the best I could come up with.

So you don't feature metal then?

- I think the name has led some people to think that. This is not a metal site. However I will feature industrial metal and possibly grindcore and extreme metal. - Halo - for example, whilst perhaps being classed as a metal band, are also possible to categorise as harsh noise and industrial, even though they don't fit with most people's idea of what industrial is. The metal part was more of a reference to the type of using-scrap-metal-as-instruments-mentality of some industrial bands. Metal percussion is fun. :-)

What the hell happened to the new music page?

- It's gone. All the industrial/electronic artists on there are now profiled on the artists page instead. That way I don't have dozens of pages to update and maintain or reupload whenever the site has to be moved somewhere.

What the hell was Insanity Pulse?

- Insanity Pulse was my site devoted to promoting new, unsigned, underground or underrated artists. I ran it and its accompanying Yahoo club/group for over 2 years in which time we had a few thousand visitors. But...all good things come to an end. I wanted something new and the result was this beastie. Updating and maintaining the two sites (three, if you count the mini-sites which although part of Insanity Pulse were built separately) on 3 totally seperate web hosting sites was getting to be a pain in the ass. The easiest thing was to combine them, resulting in the new music section on this site. The Insanity Pulse group though remains, for now.

Why don't you feature other forms of music any more?

- Isn't industrial, IDM, EBM, noise, powernoise, synthpop, darkwave, industrial-dance, industrial-metal, industrial-rock, etc enough for you? I have nothing against most other forms of music that I used to feature, and I still like a few non-electronic bands, it's just that industrial and weird electronica is my first love and this site is supposed to reflect that. So I pulled the alt/metal/rock etc pages. Also means I have fewer pages to worry about as well. Apologies to the bands I did feature and now no longer don't.

What music won't you feature on the site?

- Mainstream dance, bands who the media thinks are goth or industrial because they wear eyeliner or have a keyboard when they're just some dumb nu-metal act. Music which is not at least vaguely classifiable as industrial or experimental electronic. Oh and anyone who rips off Skinny Puppy. ;-)

Basically, no 'pop princesses', boy bands, manufactured groups, straightforward rock or metal (i.e. other than industrial-rock or industrial-metal, which I will include), rap, hip-hop, mainstream dance music (we prefer our dance music to have at least a little intelligence), repetitive nu-metal and emo, punk pop, country, R n B, traditional classical, or anything that really doesn't fit into the whole themes and ideas of the site and group. Definitely no whiny "I'm so unpopular that I only have six million fans" type rock bands. I'm not adverse to the more extreme forms of metal, say grindcore, especially when some bands that come into that category could possibly also be termed noise or even industrial or something of the sort, just depends what they sound like.

I'm not a huge fan of most synthpop and club-oriented EBM music but I may possibly still feature these. Depends on my state of mind at the time...

Basically, if it's electronic and weird, I'll probably feature it. Noisy is good too. Originality isn't vital (but rip off my fav bands and I *will* kill you). The lyrics (if there are any) don't have to be the most profound statements ever. But I do like something that at least holds my attention for more than 10 seconds.

What are the mini-sites?

- More detailed pages or sites for various bands.

Why the hell do you bother with this site?

- Because beautiful music keeps me sane (well, almost), I have nothing better to do and I'm too selfish to devote myself to charity work or something...

Anyway, I have yet to find a magazine, group or site that caters for the sort of music I'm into (i.e. industrial *and* IDM *and* noise and suchlike) - they're either about one or the other, or else they cater for all of them but only because they cover all forms of music, in which case they feature stuff like Britney Spears and nu-metal that I *really* can't stand. So since I can't find other places like this, I built my own (and yes, I have found plenty of people who do like industrial *and* IDM and suchlike). Plus a lot of suppposedly industrial sites only mention stuff like Orgy and Coal Chamber which - while I don't want to sound like some elitist asshole who only categorises about 3 bands from the late 70s as industrial - is not industrial.

Who are you?

- A slightly demented Skinny Puppy-loving industrial-gothic-punkish type person (some say I'm female, but despite what some feminists tell you being female really sucks; I'd sooner be a guy). I'm also obsessed with the beautiful Coil. Here is a page with some more info about me. What do I look like? Wouldn't you like to know...
And I am not a stereotype, just a cliche. ;-)

Is industrial dead?

- Has it ever been alive? ;-)

Industrial isn't dead, IMO, it just evolved like anything else. In one way, it got corrupted by NIN et al into mainstream electronic rock (not intentionally necessarily, just they did their thing and the media got the wrong end of the stick and since humans are obsessed with labels and categories, they started misusing the industrial label until no one had any idea what it actually meant any more). In another way, I think it went off into the stranger underground stuff, such as powernoise. Most "industrial" bands aren't industrial in the sense that Throbbing Gristle, for instance, were industrial. But who cares? I tend to use it now to refer not to one particular style of music, but as a broad genre name encompassing a variety of subgenres (as metal or rock encompasses a wide variety of sub-genres), such as noise, powernoise, EBM, industrial-metal, etc, with IDM as perhaps a close relative. All categories become perverted and corrupted once the mainstream media gets hold of them. I don't claim that every band I like is "keeping it real". Whatever anyone thinks of them, I like NIN, I like VNV Nation (to some extent), I like lots of bands that some people would probably have a fit over if you dared to mention their names in their presence. I don't care. Listen to what you want.

I'll put industrial on here, I'll put noise, experimental, powernoise, darkwave, coldwave, whatever-else wave, EBM, IDM, any other electronically oriented 3 letter terms, maybe even a little synthpop and electroclash if it doesn't suck too badly on here. I have better things to do than argue about the meaning of words.

I also think industrial is an attitude, not a style of music. Like the lovely Ogre once said, it was like punk only noisier. An attitude like that is never really going to die, even if it only lives on underground (which is obviously the best place for it, since most people would probably be reduced to quivering wrecks by what some artists pass off as music, and if it's underground that leaves us industrial-fans free from being bothered by Britney Spears and the rest).

Why should I visit your site when there are 9 zillion other similar sites/ezines/groups/whatever?

- No one forced you to come here. If they did, I apologise.

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