Apparently EBM is dead, according to Peter Richter, the guy behind..er.. EBM project Verrottet.
It’s kind of odd but back in the very late 80s, up to around ’93 I got into EBM in a big way. And even more curiously I found it easier to uncover stuff (bearing in mind no internet – we lived in caves, banged rocks together, that kind of thing) than anything resembling metal I might like. It was all permed hair and spandex and for some reason apart from Bolt Thrower the metal underground slipped past me unnoticed.
EBM filled a void. It was definitely ‘other’. It was harsh in its own way; an inescapable militaristic punctuation to the keyboards in sync with the drum machines, austere images and lyrics that were often nihilistic, or political (in a good non-Nazi way despite some imagery) or eyeing society with a withering gaze. Like a lot of people I mostly blame Front 242’s ‘Headhunter’ but also Frontline Assembly (in particular Tactical Neural Implant and Caustic Grip), KMFDM and their offshoots (Excessive Force in particular), Nitzer Ebb, DAF and later the weird compilation ‘Hotwired Monstertrux (Built By Robots, Driven By Nutters)’, early VNV Nation and that first heavy as fuck Peace, Love And Pitbulls album. Then Ministry and NIN rose to the top, Rammstein decided to stop sounding like KMFD (no really, go listen to their very early stuff) and it all started to creep and mutate into industrial metal (which can be very cool indeed, don’t misunderstand) and EBM seemed to slide back into the underground.
Which brings us to Verrottet. As the sample slides away on opener ‘Auferstehen’ this is bitter and bleak and pretty darned pure EBM. No concession to real melody, sheet metal drum sounds and hammering keyboard notes marching together and an eerie backwash of electronic noises. There are, to me at least, clear influences from the likes of DAF and FA but the vocals are…harsher by far. An almost black metal influence that somehow infects the atmosphere. Don’t go expecting anything like the great Gohst though; this is still hardcore EBM. Lyrics are all in German, which is kind of the perfect language for this but without either lyric sheet or translation my minimal grasp helps not much at all. We have songs like ‘Totentanz’ and ‘Totenkopf’ (which I admit with the album cover might get hackles rising but this lot have even donated proceeds to the Voting Rights Project, a civil rights organisation worth looking up), ‘Jung Und Tot’ and ‘Ratten Im Gemauer’ it all is somewhat oppressive in atmosphere to me. A description of a bleak political landscape and an even worse human one (‘Lieber Dich Kalt’, which translates as love/prefer you cold and seems to repeat the word bestiality being a perfect example…. Cold Heart, Dead By Tomorrow, End Time…you get the drift..).
This is most definitely a bleak work, a cynical eye and a pessimistic feel permeates. It is also pretty much a harsh crash course in EBM – if it’s a genre new to you, you may struggle to find the nuance and the variation you usually expect. But trust me it is here. When your ear attunes the subtlety and precision and groove will have already seeped into you. This is hypnotic and compelling music to me. Dark, relentless and bleak.
A world of cold hearts and dead love awaits….
(8.5/10 Gizmo)
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