Today n0teeth is going to talk about noisy, rhythmic industrial music. For a change.

First off, a bit of housekeeping (I've always wanted to say that! All the clever people seem to write it in their blog posts). This house does not consider "rhythmic noise" to be synonymous with power noise. You've got the great big wide world of noise music, which is a distinct genre in its own right, with its own myriad quirks and variations, separate from but frequently overlapping with industrial. Some of my favourite music I've ever heard, am currently listening to and - we can safely assume - have yet to hear exists in this overlap.


You've got power electronics, which is rarely (if ever) rhythmic, and whose relationship to industrial music really boils down to one of guilt by association. My problematic faves Whitehouse (and less problematic faves Ramleh) were undoubtedly influenced by Gristle and co when they erupted into the post-punk musical landscape of Thatcher's Britain like pus from an angry bright red genital wart but they soon established power electronics as a new kind of beast in town. As I've said before, industrial music was never exclusively about bombarding the audience with the most abrasive frequencies possible, but that and the cheery, amusing lyrical subject matter are the aspects of industrial music most readily noticeable in the PE subgenre. Aside from that, the industrial-PE relationship has more to do with the loose category of people making unpopular electronic music in the early 80s than any particular audibly shared characteristics. If Sutcliffe Jugend is industrial then so was Nash the Slash.


Power noise (sometimes known as noize), then, is noise that you can usually dance to. The subgenre was made famous by German labels such as Ant-Zen and Hands in the 90s and later introduced to a wider, younger audience (yours truly included) via Metropolis Records hot property Terrorfakt. The sound is a relentlessly rhythmic one, usually but not exclusively in 4/4. That stomping jackhammer rhythm makes power noise a decidedly club-oriented affair, although plenty of artists primarily known for producing it have also dabbled in breakbeats or abandoned rhythm altogether for more ambient sounds.


That's where the umbrella of "rhythmic noise" pops open. Under it you can find acts as experimental and abstract as Esplendor Geometrico or Pan Sonic as well as the aforementioned dancefloor friendly power noise acts (P.A.L. is the only artist I can think of off the top of my head whose career has spanned the two worlds). And it's under this cheap, rusty umbrella bought from a newsstand outside a tube station and instantly turned inside out by a gust of polluted wind, that we find the music I wanted to bring to the reader's attention today: the new wave of British rhythmic noise.

(Is it really new, is it really a wave, or have I just loosely lumped together a load of arists I've been enjoying lately who happen to have been active while I've been into industrial? Who cares, check 'em out either way.)

Tapewyrm

A relentless, seething anger underpins every single note this artist spits out. Tapewyrm is a maximalist: not one inch of air is spared from being stuffed to the seams with layer upon layer of barbaric, raw-as-sandpaper distortion. The rhythms are crunchier than broken glass but there is little here that you could dance to in a club; you could only sit on the floor, squashed into a dark corner on too much ket, while the harsh, mechanistic rhythms compacted your skull into a hideous meaty cube.

Non-Bio

With a more broadly industrial and more heterogenous sound than the rest of this list, this South London act is nevertheless a dab hand at bringing the noise, detonating screaming frequencies from devices unknown. n0teeth suspects some home-made gear may be involved, and imagines a garden shed emitting occasional bangs and puffs of acrid black smoke.

Riotmiloo

One of the first things you'll notice about Riotmiloo is the vocals. On the rare occasions that the human voice appears in noise it's usually harsh, rasping, cloaked in enough distortion to melt a cybergoth's plastic hair extensions - but with Riotmiloo the vocals are clear, lucid, sometimes enraged by the state of the world and sometimes vulnerable and desperate. Underpinning these vocals is a pleasingly diverse, satisfyingly crunchy array of beats. Riotmiloo's previous full-length album La Pierre Soudée featured a star-studded lineup of guest producers including n0teeth faves Philipp Münch and Dirk Ivens, while her latest offering Blackout (also Ant-Zen, 2023) was exclusively produced by long-time collaborator eva3.

Dirty K

Yeah, I reckon that's power noise alright.

Red Meat

Manchester's Red Meat rules the dance floor with a spiked leather glove and a greased-up fist full of distortion. A somewhat less noisy and more clubby entry on this list, Red Meat nevertheless packs a hefty, distorted punch. The Meat machine will be touring this sceptic isle later this year - get on it!

Element Abuse

The above track doesn't quite do justice to the sheer rancid sonic malevolence Al Matthews would unleash on 2007's Unbirth, his sole full-length contribution to rhythmic noise. If you can hunt down a copy of the CD you'll also be rewarded by some utterly wrongheaded track titles that show a warped sense of humour pulsing and squelching behind the blistering racket. Nowadays Matthews can be found spinning tunes on NARR Radio or crafting his own idiosyncratic edits after a decade-odd in the Proper Techno Game (tm).

Gusto Extermination Fluid

GUF released the glorious full-length The Cleaner via the excellent Miracle Of Modern Technologies label. The album - from 2007, clearly a vintage year for rhythmic noise in this country - merits its own piece, so all I'll say for now is that I have yet to tire of having this thing rattling around in my skull at volume levels I will probably come to regret later on in life.

Kult303

Kult303, as you'd probably guess from the name, brings the acid to rhythmic noise and makes it squelch til it can squelch no more. Scattered across her Bandcamp page you will spot influences from well beyond the four walls of the Slimelight noise floor: n0teeth would confidently bet on psytrance raves and crusty techno squat parties shaping the Leicester based producer's sonic footprint.

Rhythms of Decay

Those of you who are paying attention rather than wondering when n0teeth will shut the fuck up and let you go and have your dinner will notice that this is a compilation, not an artist. And what a compilation it is! Rhythms of Decay was dragged kicking and screaming into the world by Huddersfield label Infekted Sound, bringing together big international noize names like Iszoloscope and homegrown UK talent such as the aforementioned Riotmiloo co-conspirator Eva3. Infekted Sound is sadly no longer active, but for a few years back there its founders were also running a label night down the ol' Electrowerkz to showcase the noisier side of industrial.

2nd Gen

If you take away just one recommendation from this piece make it 2nd Gen's Irony Is, a monstruous, speaker-rattling slab of noise, bass, beats and distortion and still, in this writer's humble opinion, the best industrial album of the 21st century thusfar.