In 1990s Cinema, Industrial Music Was the Soundtrack of Society’s Collapse
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The post In 1990s Cinema, Industrial Music Was the Soundtrack of Society’s Collapse appeared first on Consequence.
Consequence’s Industrial Week continues with a look at how the genre influenced film in the 1990s and beyond. Keep up with all of our Industrial Week content, including our Best Industrial Albums of All Time list, and check back for more lists, artist-curated features, essays, and more.
Most genres of film inspire a certain sound: You think of a Western, and Ennio Morricone’s The Good, The Bad and the Ugly theme echoes in your head. Imagine a romantic comedy, and Etta James’ “At Last” comes to mind.
And as industrial music broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it coincided with a growing trend in the world of film. Directors have used this medium for years to tell stories about dark futures for humanity, from 1927’s iconic Metropolis to Stanley Kubrick’s equally iconic A Clockwork Orange (1971). However, filmmakers like Alex Proyas, the Wachowskis, and even Steven Spielberg found themselves turning to industrial artists and industrial sounds in their depictions of dystopias, ultimately infusing the two genres together.
In discussing this, you really have to start with The Matrix (1999), because Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s genre-defining classic didn’t just blow our minds, but delivered a platinum-selling soundtrack. Starring Keanu Reeves as the unexpected savior of a human race unaware it’s been enslaved by “the machines,” the film blends an awe of technology with a healthy fear of it, which is why the hard electronic sounds of Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” or Ministry’s “Bad Blood” prove to be such a natural fit for the world of the story.
The Matrix didn’t come out of nowhere, either — while the Wachowskis had a singular vision, the aesthetic they invoked was similar to films released earlier in the decade. Proyas’ cult favorite The Crow (1994) is set in a city on the brink of complete collapse, its grimy crime-filled streets making it all the more appropriate that bands like NIN and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult are featured in the soundtrack — in fact, the film features a performance from the actual members of My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, all the better to enhance the film’s tragic story and violent action.
The Crow wasn’t the only bleakly-themed film of the era that looked to the world of industrial music. The soundtrack for the Michael Jai White-starring Spawn literally emulated the genre by pairing bands including Metallica and Korn with producers such as The Crystal Method and Orbital, creating a completely original album infused with that sound. And maybe one of the most notable uses of industrial music in film is the 1995 Mortal Kombat — its tone and aesthetic are very much in line with these films, in part thanks to The Immortals’ “Techno Syndrome” kick-punching pure unfiltered industrial dance beats at the audience.
Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) explores ’90s society as if it was already a dystopia, and MTV was the doomsday event. So it’s all too fitting that as serial killers played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis unleash anarchy and bullets, they do so while accompanied by tracks from a wide variety of artists, but most notably Nine Inch Nails, with Trent Reznor serving as producer on that soundtrack.
In terms of film, the 1990s was just the beginning for Reznor, as he would of course go on to become an Oscar-winning composer for film, alongside collaborator Atticus Ross — their most dystopian score to date would probably be the one created for the HBO limited series Watchmen (2019), but they brought similar vibes to their work on multiple David Fincher films, including The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
While this trend fully emerged in the ’90s, it’s worth noting that films made prior to the decade were already starting to pick up on what an industrial sound added to this specific genre. Thanks to the factory sounds incorporated into the score, Brad Fiedel’s music for 1984’s The Terminator feels like it’s just a synth track away from getting released by 13th Planet Records. And just to bring everything full circle, Fiedel would go on to compose the score for the 1995 cyberpunk film Johnny Mnemonic, a film which also featured KMFDM and Stabbing Westward on the soundtrack.
In short, stories about bleak societies and industrial music are like peanut butter and jelly — perfect together. Even Steven Spielberg understood this while making A.I.: Artificial Intelligence; the dystopian fairy tale features Ministry in its most disturbing sequence, a demolition derby known as a “Flesh Fair,” in which humans resentful of robots delight in watching them tortured.
A.I. proves memorable here not just for how perfectly the band’s sound fits with the sequence, but for the fact Ministry actually got involved with the project years earlier, when Stanley Kubrick was originally planning to direct. Songfacts spoke with the band’s Al Jourgensen in 2012 about the experience, Jourgensen saying at the time that Kubrick “called me up out of the blue and said he was a big fan and he had this screenplay that he sent me and he wanted us to be the band and to write the music for it. And then he died.”
After Kubrick’s death in 1999, Spielberg took over the project, and kept his mentor’s choice of band involved. In the Songfacts interview, Jourgensen explains that the experience wasn’t a great one for him (short version: the robot teddy bear kept breaking down). However, Stanley Kubrick made the right call with his initial hire, and Spielberg made the right call in preserving it — the edge the band’s songs bring to A.I. might not mesh with the perception of a Spielberg film, but honestly that only enhances their power.
Since the ’90s, industrial music’s increased popularity has seen it featured across multiple genres: Joe Manganiello strips to NIN’s “Closer” in Magic Mike XXL, while several Saw movies and Rob Zombie’s increased forays into filmmaking (with his own music on the soundtrack) made sure the world of horror featured those same raw driving beats. The Resident Evil franchise, set in a horrific zombie apocalypse, also features bands including Static-X and Coal Chamber.
However, for many people, it’s films like The Matrix and other nightmares of what might come which have the closest association to the genre. We won’t know what the future looks like until it happens to us. But those of us who grew up with these movies might believe, deep down, that if things go wrong, this is what it’ll sound like.
In 1990s Cinema, Industrial Music Was the Soundtrack of Society’s Collapse
Liz Shannon Miller
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