Early industrial performances often involved taboo-breaking, provocative elements, such as mutilation, sado-masochistic elements and totalitarian imagery or symbolism, as well as forms of audience abuse. The purpose of industrial music initially was to serve as a commentary on modern society by eschewing what artists saw as trite connections to the past.

Industrial music is commonly built around non-musical and often distorted, repetitive, percussive sounds of industrial machinery, reflecting feelings of alienation and dehumanization as a form of social critique. The typical themes of industrial music include decay, decomposition, disorders, helplessness, horror, irresolution, madness, paranoia, persecution, secrecy, unease and terror. Listener responses were sad, dark, anxious, futuristic, death, urban, violent and anguish.

Journalist Simon Reynolds described the early industrial group Cabaret Voltaire as characterized by "hissing high hats and squelchy snares of rhythm-generator." He enumerated the members' individual contributions as "[Chris] Watson's smears of synth slime; [Stephen] Mallinder's dankly pulsing bass; and [Richard H.] Kirk's spikes of shattered-glass guitar." Watson custom-built a fuzzbox for Kirk's guitar, producing a unique timbre. Mallinder's vocals were also electronically treated. Chris Carter built speakers, effects units, and synthesizer modules, as well as modifying more conventional rock instrumentation, for Throbbing Gristle.

Throbbing Gristle opposed the elements of traditional rock music remaining in the punk rock scene, declaring industrial to be "anti-music." Accordingly, Throbbing Gristle did not seek to build upon a pre-existing genre, but instead "their mythos rests on the claim that they are the founding creators of an entirely new genre, 'industrial music.'"

The band wrote music about unusual as well as mundane topics, including seduction, suicide, boredom, magic, stripping, rhetoric, plants, disco, pornography, calligraphy, dactylomancy, politics, their dog, underwear, and more. Cosey Fanni Tutti played guitar with a slide in order to produce glissandi, or pounded the strings as if it were a percussion instrument. Throbbing Gristle also played at very high volume and produced ultra-high and sub-bass frequencies in an attempt to produce physical effects, naming this approach as "metabolic music." They also aimed high powered lights at the audience. Some later Throbbing Gristle pieces, such as "United", were a much more dance-friendly form of electropop.