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 labels and artists have since come to be called "Industrial". This definition may include avant-garde performance artists such as Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten, Coil and Laibach; noise projects like Merzbow or Whitehouse; electronic body music/elektro acts such as DAF, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and Nitzer Ebb; Industrial rock acts like KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails or industrial metal acts like Ministry or Godflesh; or writers like William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard.

The term was meant by its creators to evoke the idea of music created for a new generation of people, previous music being more "agricultural". Specifically, it might have referred to the streamlined process by which the music was being made, although many people now interpret the word as a poetic reference to an "industrial" aesthetic, recalling factories and inhuman machinery. On this topic, Peter Christopherson of Industrial Records once remarked, "the original idea of Industrial Records was to reject what the growing industry was telling you at the time what music was supposed to be."

(text taken from Wikipedia - Section: Industrial music )