I’ve wanted to write this for a long time. Recent conversations in the industrial scene — and one thoughtful nudge from my friend
Nina Heckman — finally gave me the push I needed. This isn’t about nostalgia; it’s about remembering who we are and where we came from.
We Were the Outsiders — What Happened to Us?
by Christian Petke
Lately I’ve seen a lot of discussions in the industrial scene about so-called cancel culture — conversations that leave me genuinely baffled and, at times, deeply saddened.
Maybe part of the confusion comes from a generational gap. There seems to be a wave of newer participants who may not fully understand where our music — and our culture — came from. So before I speak about the present, I want to go back to the beginning, to the roots of what we all claim to love.
The Origins: Industrial Records and Radical Inclusion
The term industrial music was coined by Throbbing Gristle in the late 1970s. The band — Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter “ Sleazy ” Christopherson — founded Industrial Records in 1976 as a platform to release their own work and that of kindred spirits.
The motto, “Industrial Music for Industrial People,” (Monte Cazazza) wasn’t just a marketing slogan; it was an artistic manifesto. They took the tools and detritus of modern life — tape recorders, machines, factory noise, found sounds — and transformed them into art. They used shock, transgression, and confrontation as means of exposing how society represses and dehumanizes.
But there was something else happening underneath all that provocation: a radical form of inclusion.
From the very start, Industrial Records and its orbit welcomed the outcasts, the gender-fluid, the queer, the misfits, the artists who refused categorization. COUM Transmissions — the performance art collective that birthed Throbbing Gristle — had already torn down the walls between art, sex, and politics. Dudes in dresses? Check. Women in combat boots and latex? Absolutely. People in underwear and gas masks? Why not. The entire point was to reject conformity and embrace the beautifully strange.
The early industrial scene wasn’t just about sound — it was about freedom. A refusal to submit to the mainstream idea of “normal.”
My Own History: Finding Home in the Noise
For me, this was a revelation.
I was an odd kid — I liked punk and experimental music, made my own clothes, wore my hair long when it was decidedly not in vogue. My parents caught hell from friends and colleagues for “letting me be different.”
When I was little, I tried on my mother’s dresses and jewelry. I played with dolls and toy tanks alike. I never fit in neatly anywhere. I wasn’t sure who I was yet, but I already knew what I didn’t want to be: normal.
I also want to acknowledge my privilege — I could have chosen to conform if I wanted to. That’s a luxury queer people never had. But even as a straight kid, I understood viscerally what it felt like to be an outsider.
Music gave me a lifeline. It made weirdness an asset instead of a curse. And when I moved to San Francisco in 1986, I found my tribe.
Back then, standing out in San Francisco actually took effort — everyone was low-key outrageous. The clubs were sanctuaries. The industrial and gothic nights of that era were spaces where all were welcome as long as you, too, welcomed all others.
Once you passed the bouncer, you were free.
Kink was embraced. Gender fluidity was common. Sexual exploration was encouraged, not shamed. We were politically left-leaning by instinct and by conviction — part of a counter-culture that understood rebellion as empathy, not cruelty.
For the first time in my life, I felt normal. Accepted. Unquestioned.
The Drift Toward Amnesia
Over time, things changed. The music lost its edges, and — in some ways — its memory.
What had once been a revolutionary experiment became, for some, just an aesthetic: black clothes, distorted beats, aggressive lyrics.
And now, decades later, I see people within our own scene parroting the same rhetoric that the mainstream once used against us:
Protect the children. Guard society’s morality. Beware the perverts, the drag queens, the trans people.
It’s always the same moral panic, just painted in new colors.
When I hear people in the industrial community speak like this, I want to scream:
Do you even know whose legacy you’re standing on?
Throbbing Gristle and their peers were queer, fluid, confrontational, perverse by design. They built this space for all of us who didn’t fit in. The clubs we danced in, the zines we made, the very word industrial — all of it was born from defiance, from radical acceptance.
Now some of us have become what we once rebelled against.
On “Cancel Culture” and Consequence
Let me be clear: there has always been a form of gatekeeping in our scene. In 1986, when I worked the door at clubs, “cancel culture” meant one thing — keeping out the clowns who couldn’t respect the space. You could look however you wanted, love whoever you wanted, but if you came in to start trouble or mock people for their difference, you didn’t get past the door.
That was the deal. Freedom inside, respect required.
What I see now is a tragic confusion between accountability and censorship. People act like being asked to stop punching down is oppression. It’s not. It’s the bare minimum of community ethics.
And yet I also see younger people using the language of justice in ways that erase context, history, or intent.
The spirit of industrial culture has always thrived on tension. The beauty was in contradiction: dangerous yet safe, dark yet communal, offensive yet compassionate. The bouncer kept you safe, but the art could still unsettle you. That balance is what made it alive.
Remembering What Freedom Meant
Back then, “freedom” wasn’t the right to hate — it was the right to exist, to experiment, to express without fear. It was a refuge for those whom the world already hated.
When people in our own scene now target trans folks, queer folks, sex workers, or anyone daring to live outside the binary, they are not defending freedom — they’re defending their comfort. And comfort has never made great art.
I want to tell them:
You have become my parents’ generation — unaccepting of anything outside your norm. You wear black, but your mindset is beige. You’ve traded rebellion for respectability, transgression for nostalgia.
And if that sounds harsh, it’s because the stakes are life and death. Hate still kills. Rejection still drives people to despair. Your words still have consequences.
What We Can Do
We can remember. We can teach. We can pass down the messy, glorious, inclusive history that built this culture.
We can keep the spaces open, not by lowering standards but by defending what actually matters — safety, creativity, mutual respect.
We can stop rewriting history to make ourselves feel comfortable.
Industrial was born from risk. It was about truth told through noise, empathy carved from abrasion. The early pioneers confronted fascism, hypocrisy, and repression head-on. If we’re serious about honoring their legacy, then we must confront those same forces today — especially when they arise in our own ranks.
The Noise That Freed Us
When I think back to those first nights in San Francisco clubs, the fog, the strobes, the sound of metal and rhythm colliding — I remember the freedom of it all. The feeling that no one was going to judge you for who you were or what you wore or whom you loved.
That was the promise.
That’s what I fell in love with.
And that’s what we stand to lose if we don’t reclaim it.
Industrial music was never meant to comfort the powerful. It was made by and for outsiders. If you can’t handle difference, you’ve misunderstood the entire project.
We were supposed to be the ones who questioned everything — not the ones enforcing conformity in new clothes.
So maybe it’s time to get uncomfortable again. To remember why we built this noise in the first place.
To make sure that every person who walks through the door — whatever door remains — can still say:
“For the first time, I feel free.”
Das hat also nicht mehr viel gefehlt, dass der andere Hund Hops gegangen wäre 
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