Metal Machine Music: Cyberpunk Meets the Black Leather Synth-Rockers
Escape Velocity Excerpts | Published on October 12, 2004
The cyber-rockers and cyberpunk writers in Chapter Two scuffle over the legitimacy of their mutual claims to the torn mantle of adolescent rebellion. In so doing, they highlight the essentially cyberpunk nature of rock music, a form of low-tech insurrection made possible by the human-machine interface. Rock has been cyborgianed—-or, to use the science fiction writer Norman Spinrad's punning coinage, "Neuromantic"—from the very beginning. "Cyborgs, romantic cyborgs, Neuromantic cyborgs, have in fact been using technological augments for transcendental purposes ever since Dylan picked up that electric guitar," writes Spinrad. "When it comes to the characteristic music of our times, we have all been accepting Neuromanticism as a given for a quarter of a century."
Chapter Two notes the appropriation of the term "cyberpunk" by neurocore and art-clang bands such as Sonic Youth, Elliott Sharp, (SOUND CLIP: 8-bit /352K 16-bit/705K) and Front Line Assembly; chronicles the influence of punk and industrial rock on cyberpunk novelists such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and Pat Cadigan; and teases out the cybercultural themes of mechano-eroticism, body loathing, social control, and the fear of predatory machines woven through the Nine Inch Nails video, "Happiness in Slavery."
Set in what a press release describes as "a world in which people willingly submit to ritualized sadomasochistic relationships with devouring machines," "Happiness in Slavery" stars body artist Bob Flanagan. The roller coaster ride into the abyss begins when Flanagan climbs into the stylized chair in a grim, decaying chamber that could be an abandoned basement, an S&M dungeon, a torture cell, or a gothic laboratory. Without warning, the mechanized device comes alive: metal restraints snap over the armrests, pinning Flanagan's hands in place, and sharp wires shoot out of them, burrowing into his flesh. He grimaces in agony/ecstasy as a three-clawed pincer rips a gooey, worm-like organ out of his chest while a drill arm bores a messy hole nearby. His entrails are processed by thrusting, lubricated machines and, for the coup de grace, the chair transforms itself into a heavy metal sarcophagus, sealing itself shut with Flanagan inside. A sphincter irises open on its underside, and a wad of offal—Flanagan's remains, presumably—plops onto a mass of writhing worms.