The book is a comparative study of popular music cultures in 1980s Torino, Tampere, Manchester and Düsseldorf and their relation to the industrial city as imaginary, as heritage and as everyday reality.

Popular music genres, such as hardcore punk, house, industrial, post-punk and heavy metal, share a common origin in 1980s decaying industrial cities. All these genres have been canonized and understood as “scores” for grey, gloomy, decaying urban industrial environments or for their evocation, but is there an organic relationship between de-industrialization and this kind of music production?