Electronic body music (acronymized to EBM) is a genre of electronic music that developed in the early 1980s in Western Europe. It combines sequenced repetitive basslines, programmed dance music rhythms, and mostly undistorted vocals and commandlike shouts with confrontational or provocative themes. EBM gained a stable following in the second half of the 1980s. Around that period, a youth-cultural scene emerged from EBM whose followers describe themselves as EBM-heads or (in North America) as rivetheads.