Nine Inch Nails and the Industrial Uprising, Metal Machine Music (review)

Alexander Carpenter

Notes, Volume 66, Number 3, March 2010, p. 654 (Review)

Published by Music Library Association DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/not.0.0288

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/376373

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] 654 Notes, March 2010

although never more than about fifteen presented as well as music and some short seconds at a time, presumably because of segments of concert videos (including copyright issues. Some spoken interludes some apparent bootlegs). The concert ma- from various performances (a 2005 VH1 terial seems to span several decades of concert for example) are included, provid- Springsteen’s career and is used to illus- ing some welcome insight into Spring - trate the points the documentary is at- steen’s compositional motivation. The tempting to make regarding his artistic de- 1980s interview with Springsteen is again velopment, but they are unfortunately not used, with large parts recycled from the dated or located. first disc. In fact, much of the information in the second DVD is just an amplification John Clark of what is in the first, with some more detail Connecticut College

Nine Inch Nails and the Industrial Uprising, Metal Machine Music. DVD. Surrey, UK: Sexy Intellectual, 2009. SIDVD546. $19.95.

This bio-documentary film examines the placing him among the key creative figures emergence and popularization of the genre in the development of a contemporary in- of “industrial” music, focusing on the band dustrial music aesthetic and offering criti- Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and its founder cism and interpretation of individual and principle musician/composer, Trent albums and songs. Reznor. Commentary and context are pro- While Metal Machine Music offers a much- vided by two former members of NIN, a needed portrait of an often-overlooked mu- handful of other musicians (most notably sical genre, it falls short on several counts. Genesis P-Orridge, founding member of The historical context provided is decep- seminal industrial band Throbbing tively narrow, and either entirely omits or Gristle), and a selection of rock journalists gives only cursory mention to a number of and biographers. The film includes many bands—for example, Killing Joke, Joy musical examples, historical photos, and Division, Bauhaus, Kraftwerk, and Skinny concert footage of a wide range of indus- Puppy—that were essential to the develop- trial and proto-industrial bands. ment of industrial rock and that directly in- Metal Machine Music argues that indus- fluenced NIN. The socio-cultural analysis trial music evolved out of a fusion of punk offered in the film—suggesting that that in- and electronic music in Britain in the 1970s, dustrial music arose as a response to “pop,” grew in influence in the United States is driven by “rage,” and reflects the ennui through the late 1980s and early 1990s, and and hopelessness felt by young musicians effectively culminated with Reznor and NIN, living in America’s “rust belt” in the who commercialized it in the 1990s. NIN is 1990s—is rather shallow and facile. Metal credited with tempering the genre’s aggres- Machine Music’s gravest oversight is that it sion and harsh, dehumanized sounds with focuses on pop biography and so never re- more accessible timbres, danceable beats ally gets to the most interesting aspect of its and more emotional and poetic lyrics. The subject, namely industrial music itself: how film begins in the 1970s, seeking the origins it is made, and how its evolution is symbiot- of industrial music in both punk rock— ically linked to the evolution of the drum citing the Sex Pistols and punk’s DIY machine, synthesizer, sequencer, sampler ethos—and in experimental European and other the other digital technologies so bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Kraftwerk, and central to the compositional ethos and aes- Throbbing Gristle, who included electronic thetic of bands like NIN. sounds, often reminiscent of factory noises, This DVD will likely be of use as a re- in their music. The film’s historical narrative source for introductory popular music jumps from the U.K. to the U.S., examining courses, but lacks the depth and analysis a small collection of groups that shaped the that might attract musicologists and cul- American industrial music scene, including tural historians/theorists interested in pop- the industrial-metal band Ministry and its ular music. offshoots, and NIN. The latter part of the Alexander Carpenter DVD focuses on Reznor’s life and music, University of Alberta, Augustana