Music
Whitehouse specialized in self-described "extreme electronic music". They were known for their controversial lyrics and imagery, which portrayed sadistic sex and rape through the point of view of notorious serial killers such as Peter Kurten and Dennis Andrew Nilsen. Later works explored the psychology of eating disorders and child abuse amongst other forms of violence and abjection.
Whitehouse emerged as earlier industrial acts such as Throbbing Gristle and SPK were pulling back from noise and extreme sounds and embracing relatively more conventional musical genres. In opposition to this trend, Whitehouse wanted to take these earlier groups' sounds and fascination with extreme subject matter even further; as referenced on the sleeve of their first LP, the group wished to "cut pure human states" and produce "the most extreme music ever recorded". In doing so, they drew inspiration from some earlier experimental musicians and artists such as Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, and Yoko Ono as well as writers such as Marquis de Sade.
Whitehouse's early records heavily involved the use of the EDP Wasp synthesizer. The signature sonic elements included simple pulverizing electronic bass tones twinned with needling high frequencies, sometimes combined with ferocious washes of white noise, with or without vocals (usually aggressive frenzied screams alongside sinister whispers). In a 1990 interview, Bennett recalled: "I remember seeing an issue of that punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue and it said that all you needed to make music was to learn three chords, and I thought why do you even need to know three chords to make music? Why do you even need to use a guitar? The idea of thunderous extreme noises appealed to me."
Beginning on the controversial 1998 release Mummy and Daddy, the band phased out the analog equipment responsible for their prior sound, instead relying more heavily on computers. From 2003 onward, they began incorporating percussive rhythms of African instruments such as the djembe, both sampled and performed in-studio.
On November 29, 2008, a YouTube video titled "Whitehouse - Why You Never Became A Dancer" was uploaded. The video featured an image of Reiko Takemura, one of Kiyoshi Ōkubo's victims, edited to move in a disturbing manner while the song "Why You Never Became a Dancer" from the Whitehouse album Bird Seed played in the background. The video sparked a search for the identity of the woman, and in 2023, a Reddit post traced the image to a book about Ōkubo's crimes and identified the woman in the video as Takemura.
