I got to thinking about industrial music the other evening. I happened upon the video for Filter’s “Hey Man Nice Shot,” and though not the gritty, acidic version of industrial still celebrated by a few, it was at the height of the genre’s recognition. By proxy, I began to think of the equally toxic noises that the last decade has produced by mutating synthesizers and electronics into a futuristic obelisk firmly planted in an alternative past. What this has to do with Richard Riggs is largely based on my projection of taste onto his sound, but Riggs happens to hit the sweet spot where industrial may have found itself had NIN, Front 242, Filter, Stabbing Westward and a host of slightly popular acts not been identified with the Hot Topic darkness of industrial pop. Karoshi certainly has its bright moments via identifiable melody structures. Yet there’s a corrosive agent eating away the sparkling flesh as the tape degrades with each passing play-through. The heavy bass and snapping snares have long been eroded; the anonymous hand gracing the cover serving as the pulsating slab of heartbeat substitution. But the drones! Oh, those spiky, spiteful drones that sink further into the tar pits. Riggs truly explores both totems of a greatly fractured (and perhaps relabeled) genre. This won’t fit firmly in the old confines of industrial music but that’s the beauty of it! Genres are dead and industrial has long been dormant in its most pertinent public applications. Karoshi stands as testimony that industrial lives on, no matter the name or association.
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