`Entertainment Through Pain.``

It could well be a motto for the style of music known as ``industrial disco.`` The slogan appeared on a 1980 album cover by the pioneering English group Throbbing Gristle, who set out to make music more perverse, brutal and radical than anything heard before, and succeeded totally.

Throbbing Gristle, along with likeminded peers such as Cabaret Voltaire, eschewed drums and guitars in favor of tapes, synthesizers and monstrous, machine-generated rhythms; jolting sound effects culled from movies, TV and radio; and distorted vocals spewing bloody valentines such as ``You`re like a virus in my garden/Subhuman! Subhuman!``

Yet 10 years after Throbbing Gristle thumbed its nose at rock and popular culture-and was treated in kind by the majority of the record-buying public-industrial disco has become too hot to ignore. ``Industrial`` initially was the tag applied to bands such as Einsturzende Neubauten and Test Dept. that literally ``manufactured`` sounds with drills and hammers, but it now encompasses any number of aggressively noisy, synthesizer- and technology-based groups, most of whom hate the term.

Whatever it`s called-industrial, dancecore, aggro, Euro-body-it`s now the music of choice for many young people in the 15-to-25 age bracket, even if it still remains virtually incomprehensible, if not repulsive, to everyone else. So now when inheritors of the Throbbing Gristle tradition, such as Chicago-based Ministry, offer their own version of ``entertainment through pain,`` they play to packed houses around the country.

At a typical Ministry show, sinister-looking characters in combat boots and cowboy hats wage war on the audience with screams, salvos of distortion and grinding, riveter-like sound effects. One wears a T-shirt with the slogan, ``(Expletive) Art, Let`s Kill.``

Beer bottles thrown from close range splash off a 10-foot-high chain-link fence, which cages off the performers from the audience. Figures break free from the seething, swirling sea of slam-dancing bodies and try to crawl up the wire barricade, only to leap back and be swallowed up in the pit. Strobes and lasers cut through the smoke and sweat and billowing fog, while jarring images of violent death dance on a screen behind the performers.

This hell on Earth not only fills concert halls, it sells records by the tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands. Ministry and related projects by front man Al Jourgenson, such as Rev-Co, Acid Horse and Lard, reportedly sell 350,000 records a year.

Once one of the best-selling bands on Chicago`s independent Wax Trax label, Ministry`s records are now distributed by the Sire/Warner Brothers empire. Another Wax Trax heavyweight, Front 242, was recently signed by Epic Records, and the Belgian group`s show next Saturday at the Riviera is already sold out.

Jim Nash formed the Wax Trax record label 10 1/2 years ago after opening a record store with the same name on Lincoln Avenue. The label is widely recognized as the home of hard-core industrial disco, releasing records by dozens of acts that sell from 5,000 to 80,000 copies each. Industry insiders describe Wax Trax as one of the most artistically adventurous and commercially successful independent labels in the world.

No wonder Warner Brothers and several other major labels are courting Nash in an effort to get their hands on records by as many as five Wax Trax artists each year. The biggest jewel in Nash`s treasure chest is My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, a Chicago duo whose next record, ``Sexplosion,`` is set for June 1 release.

``I expect and hope it will account for 33 percent of my revenue this year,`` Nash says. ``I`m looking for 80,000 to 120,000 sales, and that could easily triple if Warner or some other major distributes it.``

``Sexplosion,`` which satirizes and celebrates sleaze and style, represents the fun-loving side of industrial disco, while Front 242`s recent Epic debut, ``Tyranny for You,`` is its dark underbelly. Rather than ``selling out`` to appease a wider audience, the Belgian band has taken its music in a harder, even more ominous direction.

``When I close my eyes/I can see no tomorrow/My gift is of no use/My gift is of no use,`` intones the singer/narrator in a bleak, devastated monotone over a grid of relentless computer rhythms.

Yet Front 242`s audience, like that of the other leading industrial bands, continues to expand. ``The majors wouldn`t care about this music,``

Nash says, ``but the (sales) numbers can`t be ignored.``

Which raises the question: Who`s buying this stuff?

``I get letters from kids with bloody razor blades enclosed, which they say they used to cut themselves,`` says Marston ``Buzz McCoy`` Daley, keyboardist for My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. ``Half the letters start out, `Your music helped me so much because I live in this Godforsaken place and can`t get away.` I think I`m going to title my next album, `Why Don`t You Move Then?` ``

Yet most of the industrial-music fans who flock to Chicago clubs such as Medusa`s and Exit are well-adjusted pleasure seekers who find the music liberating and hip.

``Industrial is rowdy. It creates a type of energy that`s good for slam-dancing,`` says one of Medusa`s regulars, Samantha Creightney, 19, of Chicago. ``And it`s an alternative form of music that helps separate people from the crowd.``

Thrill Kill`s music is pure escapism, treating subjects such as Satanism, sex and organized religion as toys in a mind-blowing adult playpen.

``It was complete sensory overload,`` says Daley, describing his band`s first tour. ``We just wanted people to go `Huhhhh?` We figured at least they`d notice us.``

By exaggerating sight, sound and emotion, the industrial bands offer instant catharsis, an escape from the humdrum. To Ministry`s Jourgenson it`s no coincidence that the rise of these bands mirrored the ascent of Thatcherism in England and Reaganism in America.

``Whenever you have a real right-wing shift in society, you have a much more entrenched underground,`` the tattooed North Side resident says. ``The more right-wing things get, the more people get ticked off. When you get ticked off, who ya gonna call? Wax Trax.``

In general, the industrial bands dwell on disturbing imagery without delivering a clear message, keeping their lyrics intentionally vague and open- ended. The records are packed with bizarre, seemingly unrelated bits of information and jarring juxtapositions that recall the ``cut-up`` technique of author William Burroughs.

Daniel B. describes Front 242 as ``audio terrorists,`` who use lyrics as advertisements for the music.

``Words are just another way to infiltrate the masses, because people can more easily identify with music through the lyrics,`` he says. ``It`s like a publicity firm: They use certain techniques to get people`s attention. We use lyrics in the same way. But we aren`t putting across a specific message except for people to think for themselves.``

The message, if there is one, ``isn`t `Bang your head,` like the metal bands say, but more like `Use your head,` `` says Thrill Kill Kult`s Daley, who, like most artists in the genre, abhors the term ``industrial.``

Nash of Wax Trax also avoids the term, because it tends to become an umbrella for bands with very few sonic similarities, such as Thrill Kill Kult and Nitzer Ebb, the Young Gods and Nine Inch Nails.

``I`d say our bands are generally loud, hard, uncompromising, relatively noncommercial, but to say they all sound alike is like saying William Shakespeare writes like Ogden Nash,`` he says. ``If they share anything, it`s an attitude.``

Ah, yes, the `A` word-last heard about the time of punk rock. In many ways, industrial is 1990s punk rock, only instead of guitars and drums, its tools are computers and sampling machines.

``In no way do I consider myself a musician,`` says Daley, who plays piano but relies primarily on computers and ``sampled`` sounds to create the band`s dense, sonic collages.

``I could play a little guitar, but it wasn`t until computers and synthesizers came along that I even thought of making music,`` Front 242`s Daniel B. says. ``I consider myself a sound designer more than anything else.``

By approaching music as technicians rather than musicians, Front 242 brought rock kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

``We started making albums because we didn`t hear the music we wanted to hear, music that was not just influenced by technology but totally immersed in it,`` Daniel B. says. ``I don`t want the bands who use guitars and drums to disappear, however, because we wouldn`t have that frustration to play on. As long as bad bands continue to exist, it gives us a reason to exist, to keep on creating.``

Daley of Thrill Kill Kult agrees.

``Somebody asked me the other day if we were `contributing to the decay of rock `n` roll,` because we were a sample band, a disco band,`` he says with a laugh. ``It`s really just the opposite. Rock `n` roll was meant to be rebellious, it was the stuff you listened to because your parents didn`t understand it and hated it. But our parents don`t hate rock `n` roll anymore.``

In fact, they love the likes of the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, who have become parents themselves. No wonder the industrial bands, with their eagerness to shock and subvert, are being embraced by younger listeners.

``We think of ourselves as the National Enquirer of rock,`` Daley says.

``We`re telling stories, the story of `My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult.`

I think that`s more rock `n` roll than some of these bands playing guitars and singing about their girlfriends.``