Eric Saeger
This jackboot-industrial twosome look and sound like they come from the wrong side of the German political tracks, but they’re in fact New Yorkers dressed in the fetish-club duds you’d kill to see at your local karaoke bar. Slowly but surely, more acts are partaking of the noxious Hitler-doom atmosphere first stolen and transmogrified from Skinny Puppy’s genius by Marilyn Manson, ie KMFDM, Combichrist, half of what Dancing Ferret Records is releasing, etc.
For middle-class kids whose parents can’t make the mortgage anymore, it’s leisure-escapism from investigating political realities – anarchy has always been a big sell in crappy times like now, and when Hanzel adds the destructive coldwave sounds of machines assembling terminator robots to their angry, megaphoned German gibbering, it’s instant karma for the goth set.
In specific, this crew, in fact, are harder and more resilient than KMFDM and could easily supplant them with a couple of melodic tunes here and there. Now, however, they’re content to bellow long and madly over their Pro Tools Panzer tanks, comfortable as they are in their noise-metal skin.
