Maschinenfest was an annual three-day underground music festival in Germany, featuring industrial, power electronics, noise and other alternative electronic performers. It included both independent and signed bands as well as many vendors for music and related merchandise. Featured record labels and noteworthy companies included Ant-Zen, Hands Productions, Pflichtkauf, Spectre Records and Ad Noiseam.
Dark ambient is a genre of post-industrial music that features an ominous, dark droning and often gloomy, monumental or catacombal atmosphere, partially with discordant overtones. It shows similarities with ambient music, a genre that has been cited as a main influence by many dark ambient artists, both conceptually and compositionally. Although mostly electronically generated, dark ambient also includes the sampling of hand-played instruments and semi-acoustic recording procedures.
Brighter Death Now is the artist name under which Roger Karmanik, the founder of the Swedish record label Cold Meat Industry, releases death industrial, power electronics and dark ambient music.
In Slaughter Natives is an industrial and dark ambient project created in 1985 by Swedish musician Jouni Havukainen.
Martial industrial is a syncretic offshoot of industrial music characterized by noise, dark ambient atmospheres, neofolk melodies, dark wave tunes and neoclassical orchestrations as well as the incorporation of audio from military marches, historical speeches and political, apolitical or metapolitical lyrics. Unlike other post-industrial genres, martial industrial is typically interested more in a particular worldview or philosophy than pure experimentalism.
Coph Nia is the name given to the dark ambient act formed by Aldenon Satorial. Its first release was the album That Which Remains, which was released in 2000 at Cold Meat Industry. The original members were Mikael Aldén (composition), Magnus Baecklund (lyrics), Clara Pahlén, and Aasa Vildblomma (percussion). The three latter members, however, only participated on the first album: That which Remains (2000).
Peter Andersson is a music composer within the ambient, noise, industrial, electronic and experimental genre.
Old Europa Cafe is an Italian independent record label and mail order service specializing in ambient music, noise music, electronic music, and industrial music. It is based in Pordenone. Originating in the early 1980s Old Europa Cafe began as a small cassette label. Some of the original Old Europa Cafe artists included De Fabriek, Mauro Teho Teardo, and Brume. According to founder Rodolfo Protti, Old Europa Cafe has two guidelines for musick it releases—uncompromising industrial sounds and esoteric dark ambient styles.
Mort aux Vaches is the name of a series of albums released by the Staalplaat record label in collaboration with the Dutch radio station, VPRO. The name translates literally from French as “Death to Cows,” with “cows” being French slang for cops - it is equivalent to “Death to Pigs” in English.
Deutsch Nepal is an industrial and dark ambient project created in 1991 by Swedish musician Peter Andersson.
Cold Spring is an independent record label based in Northamptonshire, England, specialising in "all forms of extreme media, but particularly: dark ambient, neo-classical/neo-folk, orchestral, power electronics/noise, Japanese noise, minimal, death industrial, dark soundtracks, experimental, obscure electronics from Russia, China, Japan, Poland and others."
Lumous Gothic Festival was the largest festival dedicated to the goth subculture in Finland and the northernmost Gothic festival in the world. The four-day event was organised every summer in Tampere in late June or early July. While its primary focus was on music, covering musical genres such as gothic rock, deathrock, industrial, EBM and neofolk, other cultural and arts events were also organised as part of the festival. Lumous Festival consisted mainly of club nights organised in bars and clubs at the centre of Tampere, and also included a cruise dubbed die dunkle Seereise on the lake Pyhäjärvi.
Atrium Carceri is a Swedish musical project by Simon Heath, initially released by industrial record label Cold Meat Industry. Fourteen full-length albums have been released so far, as well as fourteen collaboration albums together with other artists of the genre. In 2011 Atrium Carceri left Cold Meat Industry and started the Dark Ambient label Cryo Chamber. Simon Heath also released eleven albums under the name of his side project Sabled Sun.
Hyperium Records was a German independent record label specializing in darkwave, neoclassical, ethereal, gothic rock, and ambient music, founded by Oliver Roesch and Oliver van Essenberg in 1991. Roesch died on August 1, 2002, in a motorcycle accident.
Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio (ORE) is a neofolk and martial industrial music group from Stockholm. The band is composed of its founding member and vocalist Tomas Pettersson, and Rose-Marie Larsen, who replaced Chelsea Krook on backup vocals. In 2008 Fredrik Leijström and Ronnie Bäck joined the band on bass and guitar.
Spiritual Front is a five-part neofolk act from Rome. Its members describe their music as "nihilist suicide pop", although elements of neoclassical and rock music, melancholic folk, as well as tango are prevalent, along with a recurring experimental feel. From dark, wailing experimental folk in the beginning, the sound began to transform and grow, to where it is now compared to the work of Nick Cave, Swans, and Scott Walker. The group's work has been described as crossing a wide variety of genres and musical styles or traditions, and the band itself is considered highly unique among the modern neofolk and post-industrial scenes in Europe. The ingenuity and constructiveness of Spiritual Front's songs have gained them somewhat of a cult following since their formation in the late 1990s.
Raison d'être is a Swedish dark ambient project formed by Peter Andersson. The name of the band was taken from a sentence in a book by Carl Gustav Jung: "the individuation is the raison d’être of the self". Dark ambient atmospheres, drone elements, industrial sounds, ecclesiastical hymns are all blended together to constitute the music of Raison d'être.
Nordvargr is the most commonly used name for Swedish musician Henrik Nordvargr Björkk.
Triarii is a one-man music project from the genre of martial industrial, whose name derives from the elite soldiers of the Roman battle order, the Triarians. Christian Erdmann is responsible for the music. The recordings of Triarii are published by the label Eternal Soul Records. Characteristic for the style of the project is the pathetic and sublime sound of the music and the use of samples. Erdmann himself contributes only sporadic vocals; according to his own statement, his goal is to "at some point dissolve into complete megalomania".
