The Swiss band Young Gods must be counted among the most influential innovators of the 1980s. Not only did they invent the trick of recording guitar albums without playing the guitar, but they also redefined heavy metal as a subgenre of industrial music—an insight that would be taken to its extreme consequences by countless American groups in the 1990s.

Formed in Switzerland by Franz Treichler, inspired by producer Roli Mosimann (ex Swans), the Young Gods were a trio without guitar (Cesare Pizzi on sampling and Frank Bagnoud on percussion). Already the single Envoye (Organik, 1986) announced a band with a mighty sound, capable of flaying cats like a gang of “headbangers” and crushing stones like an army of robots.

Young Gods (Product, 1987) experiments with sampled guitars and keyboards, producing small metal/industrial symphonies such as Jimmy and Feu, the most driving and hallucinatory tracks. Fais La Mouette explores more subtle and repressed, but no less sinister, sonorities. C.S.C.L.D.F. (from a coeval EP) is no less violent.
The Young Gods sample Khachaturian for Jusqu'au About, a waltz for Did You Miss Me, and everything that comes within reach for Soul Idiot, importing into the world of grindcore and industrial music Brecht’s artistic approach with the martial drums of Nous De La Lune and the experiments of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma with the percussion of Percussionne. Treichler’s Luciferian vocal delivery is the device through which the superman descends into a limbo of interference between the dreamlike dimension and the everyday world of the post-industrial landscape. The antidote to violence is a more refined form of violence.

L'Eau Rouge (Play It Again Sam, 1989) is the album that removes all hesitation. On one side, extended tracks like La Fille De La Mort and Les Enfants are more symphonic poems than rock songs, as much of the sound is (chaotically) orchestral; on the other, Rue Des Tempetes lurches along at heavy metal pace, shaken by furious bursts of riffs and cascading guitar samples in the style of the Sisters Of Mercy, Longue Route unleashes the most devastating and supersonic grindcore, and the single L'Amourir pairs a strong disco beat with a bass growl that signals latent hard rock. Halfway sit exercises in repressed violence such as the title-track, whose syncopated flow is pierced by symphonic samples and fading riffs. The songs are sung in the leader’s hoarse French.

TV Sky (Play It Again Sam, 1992) however exaggerates the reliance on studio production and presents the Young Gods as a conventional rock band, in this case an epigone of the urban blues of the late Doors. The single Skinflowers, Our House and Gasoline Man are perhaps the most accessible tracks of their career, while the twenty-minute suite Summer Eyes is an explicit tribute to Morrison and company. Meanwhile Pizzi had been replaced by Alain Monod. Very little of what made the group famous and influential can be heard again on the more restrained Only Heaven (Play It Again Sam, 1995). Moon Revolutions (sixteen minutes) is the next Summer Eyes, a long psychedelic-ambient journey through a forest of samples, with an interlude of pure sound effects and a feverish final crescendo.
The heavy metal ferocity is found only in Strangel, while the rest of the album (Donnez Les Esprits, Dreamhouse) consists of atmospheric pieces built on electronic mixes worthy of expressionist painting—neurotic sketches in constant motion, aleatory compositions of artificial noises. The metamorphoses from cosmic music to heavy metal, from Dadaist cacophony to techno patterns are essentially left to chance. Far from easy or immediate, the album is perhaps the group’s most complex and bold.

Second Nature (Intoxygene, 2000 - Ipecac, 2003) contains the usual dose of impeccable blasts (Lucidogen) but fails to introduce new elements.

After a long hiatus, the Young Gods returned with Super Ready/ Fragmente' (2007), whose highlight is the nine-minute title-track but also boasts several industrial rave-ups worthy of their past (I'm The Drug).

Knock on Wood (2008) is acoustic album, including several covers.