A rivethead is a person associated with the industrial music scene. Although industrial music emerged in the post-punk period, the identifiable stereotype of an industrial fan emerged in the 1990s.[1] The associated dress style is typically militaristic, with hints of protective gear normally worn by assembly line workers.
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Chase, founder of Re-Constriction Records, is responsible for the term's current meaning.[2] In 1993, he released Rivet Head Culture, a compilation including several Industrial acts of the American underground music scene. The same year, Chemlab—whose members were close friends of Chase—released their debut album, Burn Out at the Hydrogen Bar, which had a track called "Rivethead." Chemlab singer Jared Louche said he did not remember where "Rivethead" came from, although he states that this song title was in his mind for years.[3] The term had been used since the 1940s as a nickname for American automotive assembly line workers.[4] The term hit the mainstream with the publication of Ben Hamper's Rivethead: Tales From the Assembly Line,[5] which is otherwise unrelated to the subculture.
There are several fictional archetypes, such as, Lupus Yonderboy of the Panther Moderns, and, Razorgirl from cyberpunk culture.
The dress style of rivetheads is inspired by military aesthetics, complemented by modern primitive body modification (tattoos, piercings and scarification) or borrowed visual cues from goths (fetishism, morbid-themed jewelry and imagery, and black hair dye), as well as punk fashion elements such as the fanned Mohawk hairstyle. Some offshoots of the rivethead subculture emphasize post-apocalyptic dress style as popularized by bands such as Combichrist and Psyclon Nine. This style often takes elements from films such as Escape from New York and Mad Max.
Below are some of the main characteristics of the rivethead dress style.[6][7][8][9][10]
Female Rivets: May dress along with the femme fatale look: sexuality as power. Common are short skirts, military wear, knee-high stiletto heel boots, vinyl, leather or PVC bustiers and corsets, and lip gloss with less makeup than Goths. Often long dyed black (sometimes red or purple for example) hair that is long, short, spiked, shaved bald, partially shaved (undercut), Bettie Page bangs, or other. Colorful synthetic pony falls or hair extensions and colorful vinyl are seen, but are more known as Cybergoth wear. However, Female Rivethead fashion may be and often is identical to male Rivethead fashion.
Rivetheads are different from goths in ideological and musical terms, as well as in their visual aesthetics. Confusion regarding the boundaries of those two youth cultures has heightened because of recent (mid-1990s onwards) hybridization, which has led some people to believe that rivetheads are a goth offshoot, which is untrue.[11][12][13] The Canadian novelist Nancy Kilpatrick calls them "Industrial Goths",[14] as does Julia Borden.[15] Borden locates the period of crossover as beginning in the late 1980s and becoming entrenched in the mid-1990s.[15] The rise of Cybergoths, at the turn of the 21st century, further contributed to this crossing of boundaries.[15]
As Valerie Steele puts it:
| “ | In contrast to the old-style goth look, which was androgynous, the male industrial look was tough and military, with a sci-fi edge. Industrial men often dated goth women. The men wore goggles, band T-shirts, black trousers or military cargo pants in black, military accessories, such as dog-tags, heavy boots, and goggles. Their hair was short. Industrial women, who were fewer in number, tended to wear waist-cinching corsets, small tank tops or 'wife-beaters,' trousers, and sometimes suspenders hanging down off the pants. They also wore goggles and sometimes shaved their heads.[15] | ” |
Goths are an outgrowth of the punk subculture, while rivetheads developed from the industrial music subculture, which came to be in 1977 after Throbbing Gristle's debut album, The Second Annual Report, released in November of that year. The goth subculture developed around London's Batcave club in summer 1982.[16][17][18] Rivethead culture is highly violent and sometimes totalitarian in its visuals, but not necessarily in practice. Goth culture is generally devoid of any appreciation for violence.[19][20] The most important difference is the related types of music.
According to musicologist Bret D. Woods in his Master Thesis about industrial music,
"It is (...) important to note that some industrial artists use Marxist, socialist, and/or communist imagery in a shocking and satirical way to represent tyranny and their protest against tyranny. These are not to be seen as endorsements of particular ideologies, but are to be taken in context to their intent, a commentary on oppression".
— Bret Woods[21]