Written 1999/05/10
Their debut album, That Total Age, is perhaps best described as punk music with synthetic instrumentation. It's hard, angry, repetitious, and often very danceable. Age is so raw that NIN's Pretty Hate Machine looks like a Backstreet Boys album in comparison. With their hard, fast beats, cold, relentless basslines and McCarthy's rabble-rousing barks, Nitzer Ebb showed that synthesized music didn't have to be inaccessable, and sterile. It could be exciting and menacing at once. That Total Age might be considered the antithesis of the sugar-sweet synth pop of the eighties.
The album starts off fittingly enough with metallic percussion on "Fitness to Purpose", which swings into gear with rapid, pulsating analog kicks.
"Violent Playground" sounds very much like an indictment of man's warlike nature, and the powerful individuals who use armies like toys.
"Murderous" sports a bass pattern so catchy that years later a band called Kode IV sampled it on their album Insane, though personally I'd stick with the original.
Probably the most malevolent track on the album is "Join in the Chant". The synth bass is cold and calculated, the percussion is pounding and merciless, and McCarthy is at his most intense as he shouts "FIRE!" and "MUSCLE AND HATE!". The spartan lyrics suggest acts of greed, brutality and the madness of the mob. Suddenly the Marxist imagery adorning the album cover seems quite appropriate. This song is either a rallying cry to a revolution or a pogrom, or a warning and fierce parody of the two. Apparently a lot of people thought it was the former, and Nitzer Ebb found itself in a bit of hot water.
The reasons fans love That Total Age for are the same ones that other people hate it for. The minimalism, the anger, these are either traits to relish or to revile. Also, if you're totally humorless about totalitarian themes don't even think about even looking at this album. The gear, star and hammer motif might cause Woodrow Wilson to turn in his grave. So obviously it's not for everyone, but if you're into hard-edged synth music you can dance to, That Total Age may just be your era.
- C.S. Graves
