After industrial music emerged in the '70s from often still-grey and crumbling WWII disaster sites in England and Germany, it was probably only a matter of time before the genre started diversifying its wares. British groups like Killing Joke, Current 93 and Godflesh took industrial’s hammering rhythms and infused them with post-punk melodies, apocalyptic folk proclamations and extreme metal vocals, respectively. Across the pond, Ministry, Skinny Puppy and Swans fortified the style with electronic dance beats or abrasive guitars—or both. Crucially, Belgian group Front 242 injected industrial’s main line with pulsing rhythms they called EBM or “electronic body music”—a term they nicked from electronic pioneers Kraftwerk. And then in the early '90s, an ambitious young man named Trent Reznor found a way to assimilate almost all of these seemingly disparate developments into a little band called Nine Inch Nails. The form continues in endless permutations today, from the silky witch house of Salem to the haunting work of Zola Jesus.