Suicide (band)

Suicide
Rev and Vega before a 1988 Toronto concert
Background information
Origin	New York City
Genres	Electropunk electronic proto-punk minimalist art punk avant-garde
Years active	1970–2016
Labels	Red Star, ZE, ROIR, International, Blast First/Mute
Past members	Alan Vega Martin Rev

Suicide was an American musical duo, intermittently active between 1970 and 2016, composed of vocalist Alan Vega and instrumentalist Martin Rev. The group's pioneering music made use of minimalist electronic instrumentation and primitive drum machines, and their early performances were confrontational and often ended in violence. It was among the first groups to use the phrase punk music in an advertisement for a concert in 1970.

Though never widely popular among the general public, Suicide have been recognized as among the most influential acts of their era. Their debut album Suicide (1977) was described by Entertainment Weekly as "a landmark of electronic music," while AllMusic stated that it "provided the blueprints for post-punk, synth pop, and industrial rock."Rolling Stone called them "an unmeasurable influence on the industrial dance, noise, techno, ambient, and electronic scenes of the 1980s and 1990s."

Suicide took its name from the title of a Ghost Rider comic book titled Satan Suicide, a favorite of Alan Vega. Rev's simple keyboard riffs (initially played on a battered Farfisa organ combined with effects units, before changing to a synthesizer) were accompanied by primitive drum machines, providing a pulsing, minimalistic, electronic backdrop for Vega's murmuring and nervy vocals. It was the first band to use the term punk to describe itself, which the band had adopted from an article by Lester Bangs. Some of the band's earliest posters use the terms punk music and punk music mass.