It's been over twenty years since I joined in the chant, and Nitzer Ebb just pulled into town to perform their first New York show in ten years, in a rented camper that they are now touring across in, mind you. Douglas, Bon and Jason are getting "closer" and from what they said is hiatus that has been anything but "murderous." Most fans remember Nitzer Ebb as a very heavy industrial group who brought a wall of sound to the forefront of the music industry along with similar artists as Front 242, Nine Inch Nails, Die Warsaw, and Front Line Assembly. Their sound has aged to a golden stream of elemental tracks mixed with real percussion making their creation a unique and original foundation to the industrial music formation that would later influence Marilyn Manson, Bush, and other music artists under the Mute Records umbrella such as Depeche Mode, all were hooked to the gritty, metallic, and in your face sound that is Nitzer Ebb. On December 3rd I was treated to a flashback to my younger days as a Goth where Nitzer Ebb, The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees highly influenced me to be who I am today. I met with Douglas McCarthy and Vaughn "Bon" Harris in the downstairs bar of The Gramercy Theater in New York City just before the show began. What was supposed to take only fifteen minutes to speak to the dynamic duo turned into an over thirty minute deep and energetic Q&A. These are two childhood friends who have shown me that friendship and commonality binds two unrelated brothers through a family made up of one band and one message. Enter at your own risk.
The scratchy voice of McCarthy brought chills to my body as I was blasted back to the days gone by. The days where the lads from Essex molded me and unleashed me to see the world outside the box. "We live in Los Angeles now in the belly of the dying beast." artistically describes McCarthy regarding the end all of end all to the former music industry. An industry that has reluctantly sat back on its failure to keep pace with technology or current cultural desires for better music. "The state of the music industry is such a disaster that if I have to struggle then I'd rather struggle in the sun." he added, but Douglas and Bon aren't struggling. They both have succeeded on levels that many music artists of their time and genre vanished without a trace.
"The reality is that the music industry were already pretty harsh and severe prior to the economic down turn. Our music genre, rather, the Nitzer Ebb music has been fortunate with things being as F'ed in the industry because we decided not to approach a label and spoke to people we knew, like Jonathan Scott Miller (EMI), and we chose to remain on our own. Even now, with Geffen, what we have is a partnership thing in the states with something called "Artists' Addiction."
Miller created Artists' Addiction formed in 2005 and encompasses a division dedicated to music placement called Stop ! Go Music and a publishing division. Their goal to bring consumers and clients the best music selections for film, television and gaming takes a new approach to the all too familiar wall paper music by music source libraries. Miller reached out to Nitzer Ebb about potential projects to have the new music placed into and the partnership was established with much success.
"We are delivering more then Geffen ever could to a kid's home and the Tony Hawk game is probably going to be the biggest selling game on a cross platform for this holiday season. We are reaching millions and millions of people through this channel now." McCarthy bragged as he reinforced the idea to connect and spread your music vastly.
"No one listens to the radio anymore and we have redirected our music from radio to music placement such as in the newest Tony Hawk game. The point of fact in video games, specifically lifestyle games (Role Play), represent a whole package is the dream they always wanted. You've got this direct delivery system to twelve year olds and up where you are playing music to them, the games and consoles are always online, so if the kid is listening to the music that is on the game he likes he can access it directly. We are selling to our audience in an unrestricted environment. We don't even have a label and we are doing that."
The band seems very assured to continue seeing an increase in their music revenue. Nitzer Ebb gave me a great insight to who I wanted to be in a world that tried to keep me in check. Because of that freedom I made sure I experienced them live each time they toured. Harris brought to light the band's outlook on the fans, like me who were effected by them who have gone through their own personal identity crisis'. "Economic depression or not the economy has taken a toll on our productivity to tour as much as we'd like to and it does come with great financial repercussions to the music business. I think the same fans on this tour will definitely attend the smaller city shows, and there are some fans our age who grew up with the music who don't go to that many shows, but this is where they found their identity which is special to us. They might not fit the profile of your typical concert goer, but because we mean so much to them they will show up, buy the t-shirts, take home the album, anything to take home a part of us with them."
"We do like touring, we enjoy connecting with the people in a short amount of time throughout many different cities. It rein firms what you knew all along. As we were writing this new album we know what we like and our assumption is that there are people out there that go with what we like. To have that affirmation is the whole point to being in a band.
When a band disappears from the front it is merely impossible to resurrect a reconnection to the fans. Some fans feel abandoned and some just grow older and appreciate new styles of music. It's a very big risk that Harris and McCarthy took, but unknowingly didn't see the benefits of. Harris went on to produce Marilyn Manson, Depeche Mode and Bush while MCCarthy went back to finish schooling at the age of thirty. To come back as they did with the new album "Industrial Complex" is a true testament to the fire that burns in Harris and McCarthy as it did when they were creating sparks with their first album release "Power of Voice Communications."
"We don't feel a need to reinvent ourselves. We evolved and challenged ourselves on every record and sometimes suffered for it. When we first toured in Europe with "Showtime" there was an initial wave of electronic bands and then there was a second wave and people expected a certain thing from us. We didn't necessarily deliver it we had a lot of the elements, but there was also blues, swing, jazz and other influences in our music that we new to our fans." spoke McCarthy.
McCarthy cleared his voice and buried his head deep in thought. The room became stagnant. He clarified his thought and said, "Ironically, we stood the course, the things that made us less at the time or less successful helped us to live on unlike our contemporaries, like Front 242 and now we see it was our differences that made people uneasy or unsure about what Nitzer Ebb was doing. Those differences are all now the things that people love about the band today. When you listen to our back catalog you don't hear anything that sounds the same as any other band's back catalog. It may have been advisory on points but ultimately we stayed the course towards our master plan."
I brought the question back to the theory that Nitzer Ebb challenged us, the fans, to approach our lives differently through inspiring words and passionate sounds. "What we tried to do musically was not to instruct people, we relayed our listening habits and expressed ourselves how we felt we needed to do so. The last thing we thought when we first started a band was that we would be in our mid forties slugging it out on the road. Mid forties was so far away at that time and now everything seems to make complete sense as far as who we are and where we come from in order to complete this circle of what Nitzer Ebb has always been about."
With the new album available less then a month sales and interest are predicted to raise the awareness of Nitzer Ebb to new levels thanks primarily to the accessibility and placement of the Nitzer Ebb music. Harris chimed in on a business stand point, "The initial approach to this new album, because we like to compress and push things, got a little far from some of the core fans to really relate to as far as the early stuff. We made it a point to go right back to basics and not complicate things. We had a minimal amount of instruments and we went into recording in an instinctive and reactive kind of way just like we did when we were around sixteen years old. We went in with our emotions and instincts, put that straight into the music and view what you all now have." Harris affirmed and the he advised, "Don't get all precious about your music, it should be this or it should be that. Just keep it very simple and very direct. That was the idea going into this sixth album release. We've got some songs that are very much like the original basic material with relevance to now in a contemporary feel and I didn't feel like an old man trying play music we played when we were teens."
The music has all the essence of that energy irrelevant to how Nitzer Ebb are now or the world we are living in. So once they got five or six tracks like that they started to experiment with slightly more sophisticated sounds, with layered stuff, and the freedom to do just what they wanted artistically. Harris said, "The music just ended up being really creative where we captured a lot of the things that needed to be captured. As we experimented more, we had the confidence and the relaxation to record without issue. We managed to fit everything in so it felt related to the whole package and we did this as the team."
I was just excited to be sitting with McCarthy and Harris for my own personal awe, but different time and different place has made meeting, interviewing, and shooting the people who made this possible to me less intimidating to talk to. I was more curious to learn about what would be brought to the stage and would the show be in the fashion and sense we, the fans, have come to love? Harris answered, "Our show is stripped down because of the logistics and the current situation dictate that things have to be pretty stripped down. As always, if we agree to do the show, it's one hundred percent commitment. We're pretty easy in our personal lives, but when it is time we get on stage it's off. So they will see traditional Nitzer Ebb."
Nitzer Ebb defied the rules of the music industry by making the most of their success on their own and without restrictive contracts to suffocate them artistically or to break them emotionally from their passion to create music. Harris exclaimed, "The great thing about this tour is that it feels like it is wrapped up by us directly to the fans that were around all these years and to the new fans who are becoming involved. We managed to captivate the entire back catalog with one album which is kind of what we wanted to do with the last album some ten years ago. We going to play the songs we are known for as well as some new tracks to introduce to our fans. Instinctively we have chosen tracks from Belief, That Total Age and so on up until the Big Hit album. It's mainly because we've got five albums plus all the pre album releases to consider and now we've added a sixth album. There is a lot of music to fit in on each show and as things continue to build to the future we will be on a full tour next year. These next few shows will definitely push us into direction, then we will be reintroducing more and more great songs people haven't heard in a long time like "Warsaw Ghetto" but our view is as always to try an to deliver the most energized show that we can do."
The interview ended with a few memories from my NItzer Ebb experience as well as some from my side kick, Rachel, who relished in my history as a Goth. Both of us had an inkling that tonight was going to be a raw night to release ourselves to the mercy of Harris and McCarthy's Nitzer Ebb phenomenon. As we walked away and shook hands with our new friends I had no doubt Nitzer Ebb was going to blaze the frenzy of fans awaiting outside in garb that must have been stored away in mothball casing for twenty years. Old Nitzer Ebb concert shirts, French Berates, cargo pants tucked into black steel tipped combat boots and me in a Custo shirt with an Ed Hardy zipper hood. Yes, I conformed and betrayed my blood sucking Goth brothers and sisters this night. Harris turned away and once again McCarthy would have the last word. With his sinister smile and grave digger voice he said, "We've got a damn good one. Probably the best we ever had."
NItzer Ebb took stage and delivered on their promise. Their was no sacrifice to the sound and age proved true to be just a number. Twenty years may have gone by, but it forgot Nitzer Ebb. The metal slams, the below the belt thumps, the ravaging lyrical strikes all combined to remind the room that Nitzer Ebb has more to say. The simplicity of the stage set up was affective compared to bands who come back after a decade and hide behind smoking mirrors or large scale props and stage theatrics. That was not the case on this night and I have to admit that I went in with some doubt. I'm thrilled to be proven wrong and to be put in my place. As a fan, and a professional that was inspired by the two lads from Essex, I am telling you to be prepared. Nitzer Ebb haven't reunited. They reignited. Much like a fire with a faint amber, it takes one piece of wood, a little breath of air, and the belief that if you want to rekindle your spirits you can. Nitzer Ebb has a few days left on their tour in the US and will be back strong next year as promised.
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