'90s Industrial Metal at Its Best

'90s Industrial Metal at Its Best: Originating in the late 1980s in Europe and the United States, industrial metal grew from a variety of musical genres, most notably, dance music, noise rock, and heavy metal. Because of this diversity, many industrial metal bands, including Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and Marilyn Manson, have incorporated not only keyboards and synthesizers, but also drum machines and electronic sequencers. Perhaps one of the genre's nearest relatives was '80s synthpop, which included groups like Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, and Gary Numan. These '80s synthpop bands elevated the importance of synthesizers, and as a result, essentially laid the groundwork for industrial metal to solidify as a musical genre in its own right. Yet it was also the genre's dark sounds and anger-inducing lyrics that began to set it apart from other emerging genres like alternative rock in the 1990s. The above video by NIN, which was filmed at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, CA (part of the Manson "family" murders), truly captured the essence of industrial metal's dark and disturbing sounds.