While many subgenres have clear origins, the roots of noise-rock are tangled and confusing. Despite sharing unifying features – awkwardness; jagged edges; mulish obstinacy; vocals that suggest their owner is gritting their teeth through a fearsome UTI – many of its originators seem to share little in common beyond a quest for discomfiting hostility. There is no definitive ur-text, no Black Sabbath or Discharge to light the way.
Foreshadowings can, however, be found across multiple genres, from hardcore, post-punk, psychedelia and no-wave to early industrial and power electronics: anyplace crumpled basslines, tetanus-inducing angularity and an innate desire to goad and challenge were given heat enough to ferment. Swans, The Birthday Party, MX-80 Sound, Chrome, Public Image Ltd, Pere Ubu and Einstürzende Neubauten all serve as source material: acts that were crazed or monomaniacal, punishing but not without artfulness and capable of hypnotic properties as well as jarring discombobulation.
