How Pink Floyd Made the Industrial Noise on 'Welcome to the Machine' with a Chain and Sheet Metal

The most memorable thing about the intro to “Welcome to the Machine” isn’t the music — it’s the sound of a heavy chain being dragged across a giant sheet of metal. The band literally brought a construction-grade steel plate into Abbey Road Studios, laid it on the floor, and scraped a massive chain over it to get that scraping, metallic groan. They recorded the raw sound with close mics to capture every grind.

But it didn’t stay raw. The tape was run through a flanger and tape delay to create that swirling, mechanical phasing effect. Then they added heavy echo and compression, turning a simple chain drag into something that sounds like a factory collapsing into itself. The “door” effect at the very beginning? That came from a real studio door being slammed and creaked open, mixed with the chain scrape and processed identically. The whole build-up takes just a few seconds but instantly sets the dystopian tone of the album.