Martial industrial

This article is about the industrial-related genre. For the music used primarily in military settings, see Martial music.

Martial industrial/military pop
Stylistic origins	Neoclassical Neofolk Marches Industrial Post-industrial Dark ambient
Cultural origins	Late 20th century, Europe
Typical instruments	Military band instrumentation Synthesizer Drum machine Sequencer Sampler
Mainstream popularity	Low

Martial industrial, also known as martial music, is a music genre originating in late 20th century Europe. It often borrows musically from classical music, neofolk, neoclassical, traditional European marches and from elements of industrial and dark ambient.

Origins

The genre name military pop was coined by the Austrian musician Gerhard Petak, founder of Allerseelen, to describe the direction his music was going at the time, leaning away from an ambient sound into something more militaristic. It has since been used by other artists such as Dernière Volonté to describe their musical sound. This term is often used in place of martial industrial.

Themes

Themes range from pounding, percussive soundtrack-like music to rally-worthy dark parade music to cabaret appropriate sexually-charged carnal declarations to mournful marches. Essentially, anything that could be made with traditional European martial instrumentation relating to the artists within this genre could be considered a part of this musical movement.

Culture

Martial industrial fans range from people very politically active to cultural admirers to uniform fetishists. Due to use of fascist or Nazi uniforms by a few groups, this is sometimes misunderstood as being a means of expression of a single, unified political tendency by Antifa, groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and sometimes local news agencies, though artists in this genre range from the left (such as Test Dept.) to the right (such as Von Thronstahl) to completely apolitical.

Related genres

Neofolk

Main article: Neofolk

Neofolk music has musical and thematic elements in common with martial industrial, and the two genres developed closely together. Artists often overlap between the two genres.

See also

Artists

• A Challenge of Honour
• Allerseelen
• Arditi
• Bleiburg
• Blood Axis
• Boyd Rice
• Cold Fusion
• Dead Man's Hill
• Death In June
• Der Blutharsch
• Dernière Volonté
• H.E.R.R.
• Horologium
• Hieronymus Bosch
• In the Nursery
• Karjalan sissit
• Kreuzweg Ost
• Laibach
• Les Joyaux De La Princesse
• Life Toward Twilight
• Luftwaffe
• Parzival
• Puissance
• Rome
• Sol Invictus
• Test Dept
• The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud
• Toroidh
• Von Thronstahl
• Westwind

Related subjects

• Military band
• March music

Further reading

• Anton Shekhovtsov, 'Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and "metapolitical fascism"', Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 43, No. 5 (December 2009), pp. 431-457.

External links