Well, as I said, Industrial is a pretty vague term. NIN and Manson are definitely industrial rock (it's that or call them goth, and no way that's happening), but this doesn't, as I've said, really have any relationship with the original industrial music: industrial music was originally called that because of its means of production, ie, mechanical. Original industrial bands used random sound generators, ritualised repetition, psychedelic drugs, dada-ist cut up techniques borrowed from William Burroughs and goodness knows what else. If Coil dropped an instrument whilst they were recording, they would make a song out of it. It meant something a bit like what Andy Warhol had meant when he called his studio The Factory. At some point along the way (probably via very early EBM and Laibachs first couple of albums) this became conflated with the idea of music that SOUNDED industrial: clanking machines and martial stompings and dance beats that sound more like The Sisters of Mercy than anyone who was actually ever signed to Industrial Records. This is, obviously, the form of Industrial music that finds the widest appeal (it had proved remarkably hard to dance to fourteen minute long tracks of synthesiser noise, looped nursery rhymes and Dave Tibet screaming "JESUS WEPT!"), and thus had a lot more influence than other forms. Laibachs twisted approach to pop culture (the artistry of which was lost on most people) can't have helped. I would be very much suprised if, when he started recording music, Trent Reznor didn't think that Cabaret Voltaire was a french night club and Whitehouse was where the president lived. Wouldn't be too surprised if it's still his opinion today. I mean, fact of the matter is, Nine Inch Nails was basically an alternative rock band that Trent couldn't find anyone else to play in, and didn't have any money to spend on, so he wrote the whole thing himself on equipment at his job during night-time. He's a fucking drum programmer. Yet, you can still trace a fairly direct line from 20 Jazz Funk Greats to Pretty Hate Machine (and thence to Portrait of an American Family). By the time it gets to mansion industrial is just one of a lot of influences (I kind of see Marilyn Manson as Alice Cooper, had the latter grown up with John Waters films and Cleopatra Records). So hey. I wouldn't ever give NIN or Manson out as industrial recommendations though. No sir.
