Test Dept.

Example Album: Beating The Retreat

Location: UK

Years Active: 1981-present

Style: Metal percussion

    Test Dept. are a legendary industrial group, and perhaps one of the most well-known to ever play in this style. They formed in New Cross, south-east London in late 1981. Test Dept. play in a highly percussive form of industrial, with a significant amount of experimentation across their discography. In my opinion, Beating The Retreat has the best example of their percussive style, with the slow clanging opener of The Fall From Light, and the faster and even dancier tracks like Kick To Kill, Total State Machine, and Sweet Sedation. Also found on this album are some incredible sound collage and ambient pieces made from a huge variety of found sounds. Just really well done composition. 

    Branching out from this record, you can find more metal percussion on albums like The Unacceptable Face Of Freedom, Gododdin, and Ecstacy Under Duress. Really their whole discography usually has some form of metal percussion, though in the middle period they start to incorporate a lot of different instruments, as well as collaborations with different orchestras and theatre groups.

    A huge part of this band are its radical left politics, influenced by Marxism, socialism more broadly, and working class struggle in general. They were involved in different strikes and workers movements during the 80's, helping raise funds by putting out a split with The South Wales Striking Miners Choir, which has a top-notch version of their reoccurring track Shockwork.

    In the 90's, Test Dept. started to experiment more with electronic and techno sounds, and pulled away from the scrap metal industrial sound they became associated with. Around the late 90's they ended up splitting, until returning with their first material in 20 years, the album Disturbance. Disturbance seems to be a blend of their older scrap metal sound, mixed with the electronic and techno experiments of their 90's output, though noticeably more polished and modern.

    They are still touring and putting on live shows to this day.