Martial industrial

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.

Contents

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

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

Related subjects

Further reading

External links