However where New-Wave only registers a sort of existentialist void, Industrial is set on a mission to tear the system upside down and bring some change. It can be compared to a shock therapy with an intention to shake its audience out of its torpor and uncondition the masses by any means necessary - provocation, confrontation and ones going to great length of personal psychological and physical risks.

For industrial pioneers among which many come from the body-art and perfomance scene, music is subordinated to a global approach encompassing all arts. It is often perceived as the most efficient tool to deliver a political message, a philosophy or a way of life.

Hence beyond the underling social critic, Industrial music develops a form of political activism. Sketches of Industrail were drown on the west coast of the US during the seventies in a sort of prolongation of the past experimental rock achievments of Franck Zappa. Innovators such as Boyd Rice or Monte Cazazza lay its foundations and the sound then explodes in 1976's England. With its industrial misery and unemployment aplenty, Sheffield is the craddle for seminal noisy acts such as Throbbing Gristle or Cabaret Voltaire.

Initially quite radical in its use of 'poor' sound material from everyday life and heralding with very cheap technique, the general use of the sampler, the Industrial scene began to split in differentiated branches.

Those stemming from the Throbbing Gristle / World Serpent sphere were to gradually move towards mystycism, esoterism and psychedelism. Others, coveted by Cabaret Voltaire, focuses their experiments on rhythm and was soon to export in Belgium, Germany and Canada to give birth to the EBM movement of the early eighties. Some were also to move towards more ambient sound gradually likened to contemporary music and/or for that matter Brian Eno's work. Finally, another bunch remained faithful to the ultra-violent and noisy approach (Whitehouse, Einsturzende Neubauten et al.).

Oftentimes misunderstood and always refusing to compromise with mass media, the industrial scene moved through time and spanned an enormous influence over a large array of musicians such as Autechre, Aphex Twin, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry or Marylin Manson. Its path also crossed that of techno with the productions of labels such as Ant-Zen, Hymen or Digital Hardcore. (Michel Kowalski)