What are the differences between those tree music styles?It has already been discussed before but my brain doesn't seem to assimilate all the informations (:
I mean I always hear people calling bands such as Hocico industrial but some also call it EBM and I get confused.
As for the futurepop whole thing, is it a sub-genre of EBM?
Dame Blanche.

If you're confused, what is it that's confusing you exactly? Rather than have everyone repeat themselves, it'd be easier if you were more specific with your question on what exactly you don't understand.

I can sympathize with her confusion. For me, the specific problem is that wherever I look, the same bands are classified in different ways, and I suppose I don't have a sufficiently refined musical ear to be able to tell what the differences are (for instance, I also have trouble telling the difference, given a band or song I don't know, between rock, metal, and gothic rock).

As an example, I've heard VNV Nation classified as Industrial, EBM, and Darkwave.

Hmm okay...

I'm not going to leave this thread open long. This debate is a never ending one. I might pin it after it's locked though, as this is a common question.

Industrial: Originally a term for modern experimental music, revolving around Industrial Records. (no pun intended...) Now it's a blanket term for any electronic music that has a dark or angry edge.

EBM: Hard dance music. Originally the term was coined to describe bands like Front 242, DAF and Nitzer Ebb. Now it can also include bands influenced by Front Line Assembly into the mix I suppose. The harder dance music you will often hear at clubs.

Futurepop: A term invented by VNV Nation and Apoptygma Berzerk to describe their darker, more updated take on synthpop. Grouped into EBM by some, there is a lot of mixing in the genres. Hence the confusion. (IMHO, this genre doesn't even belong in the industrial category. It was influenced by EBM, but owes more of its sound to synthpop and trance.)



Edited By Vivisector on 1138915363

Then again, one could argue that there is a certain industrial influence in the earliest VNV Nation and Covenant albums. In later years the genre has started to sound an awful lot like trance though.

Not industrial. EBM.

The term industrial is as descriptive to music as the word goth is. That a whole different can of worms though.

Would you say that EBM is a sub-genre of industrial then? A lot of EBM has that dark and/or angry edge, so it wouldn't be totally wrong to describe it as such, I think. And because of that, I don't think it would be unfair to say that there is a certain industrial influence on futurepop, just because the three genres are linked together the way they are. Then again, as you said, industrial is a blanket term these days, and does not really describe one particular type of music.

I used to know the difference between this genres, but the more I think about how to define them, the more confused I become. I guess one could say that what they all definitely have in common is that dark edge you were talking about, in addition to being electronic genres.

Anyway, I found some alternative, but similar, definitions of the genres on wikipedia:


Industrial music is a loose term for a number of different styles of electronic and experimental music. First used in the mid 1970s to describe the then-unique sound of Industrial Records artists, a wide variety of artists and labels have since come to be called "Industrial". This definition may include Avant-garde performance artists such as Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten and Laibach; noise projects like Merzbow or Whitehouse; electronic body music/elektro acts such as Front 242, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM and Nitzer Ebb; electronic rock acts like Nine Inch Nails or Ministry; or writers J.G. Ballard and William S. Burroughs.

Electronic body music (EBM) is a musical genre combining elements of industrial music and electronic dance music. The genre's early influences run the gamut from the noisy industrial music of the time (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV) to the Radical Dance scene (Portion Control, 400 Blows) and straight-ahead electronic music (Kraftwerk, DAF).

Futurepop is a recently-emerging electronic dance music genre, an outgrowth of electronic body music incorporating influences from synth pop (such as song structure and vocal style) and trance (uplifting, grandiose and arpeggiated synthesizer melodies). The term was coined by Ronan Harris (of VNV Nation) and Stephan Groth (of Apoptygma Berzerk) while attempting to describe the style of music their bands produced.

In recent years the basic futurepop concept has been expanded upon in various ways, with bands like Pride and Fall and mind.in.a.box pushing the trance aspect of the genre, while others such as XPQ-21 have incorporated further influences from industrial and synthpop to create their own brand of futurepop music. Further, traditionally harder aggrotech bands are using futurepop-style melodic hooks in their songs, such as Suicide Commando and SITD.

I guess one could say then, that EBM falls under the term industrial, and that futurepop has been influenced by EBM, which makes it a.. err.. a sub-sub-genre of industrial (which isn't really one particular genre at all), or something like that. It's all very confusing... :b

I've notied a number of bands being labelled as different genres too. For example I've seen Rammstein referred to as: coldwave, industrial, industrial rock, industrial metal, nu metal, and metal.

Here's a link to the Sykospark FAQ I posted in the other EBM thread. It's very detailed and has links to lists of bands in those genres.

A very good site to visit is Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music. When the window loads up click on the bit in the middle and another window will pop up. There you'll see a family tree of electronic genres. If you click on Trance on the left you'll see the top half of the diagram is a load of genres including goth, industrial, EBM, coldave, darkwave among various others. If you click on a genre a blurb about it will appear in the bottom right hand corner and eventually the player will load and play a looped track and will give you the artist and song title. There'll be a load of numbers there too, click on different numbers to hear different tracks in that genre. This should help give you a clearer idea of the differences between these genres.

And on that note, closed and pinned.