The song “Pissage” by Ohgr is one I have loved for years. My politics have morphed enormously over this time yet this piece often strikes me as relevant. The song is functionally a Rorschach test. It is highly abstract and is the type of song one simply wants to contain deep meaning.
The song is clearly about the collapse of systems. If these systems should or should not collapse is unclear. If something can take their place is unclear. The song can be seen in an extreme reactionary light. I have been able to project so many different narratives onto this song. It makes one feel as if they are cluing into a deep analysis shared by a rebellious artist. Yet the song is completely devoid of analysis.
The song merely points out that things are bad now. The song mentions the concept of the free market but without context. The “freedom” lines can be taken in drastically opposing contexts. The Industrial music page of Tvtropes mentions the notion that “very underlying premise of the genre is Psychedelic Rock Gone Horribly Wrong.” This seems extremely true for Pissage. The song very much is like examining the world in an altered state.
“What's happening?
Yeah, it's happening now”
The narrators never defines what is happening besides this intense awareness of it happening right now. This horrible awareness of a major shift without analysis or such vague analysis that the listener can input any number of ideology into it. The song is wonderfully poetic for the disciplined listener while also being dangerously self indulgent to any unhinged individual. Industrial songs are often highly experimental yet often do not put analysis into their listeners.
You can’t learn world history from Skinny Puppy. Nine Inch Nails is incapable of giving you an economic worldview. These artists were never meant to do that. These songs become seriously perilous when used to either indulge mental illness or upholding art as a higher understanding of the world than analysis.
To allow oneself a poetic experience of a very dysfunctional world is one thing, allowing the cathartic venting to be seen as highlighting a true essence is another. Any listener of this genre expects certain people to assume they are a bad person for this. To assume that the appeal is in pure sadism as opposed to a wide array of emotional processing. Industrial is perhaps one of the most under analyzed genres. The main forms of analysis tend towards either assuming that the pieces hold deep political truth or that the entire genre is trash beyond redemption. The project of taking it seriously as media without automatically indulging it is seldom undertaken.
The very act of being willing to sit with uncomfortable emotions is denied to many. The epistemology needed to form a working understanding of the issues is lacking in many more. A sincere project of uncovering truth behind counter culture requires looking into the aesthetic mirrors which make us feel deep without effort.