Reviewed by
iSvadrah
Visit
Read the
Review of Ministry
from the same venue.
Last Edit/Update
07 October, 1999
Atari Teenage Riot
"beats you where it won't show"
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. 7 August 1999
ATARI TEENAGE RIOT
I was first confused by the unlikely and short-lived pairing of the hyper-political [and just plain hyper] Berlin Digital Harcore band ATR with one of America's older industrial-rock/metal standards, Ministry, but nevertheless, I scrambled for my ticket.
As it turns out, it is rumored that even well into the night the box office had only sold 300 tix for the Indianapolis, IN show. The Murat's Egyptian Room was sparsely populated, and most people milled around during the ATR set. I had never been a rabid fan of ATR, save for older works such as "SPEED" and the newer track "GHOSTCHASE," but I was an instant Alec Empire-project convert upon hearing his "The Destroyer."
The large stage contained a small table littered with sequencers, samplers, and the like, a midijunkie's picnic for sure. One rack of gear stood to the left of the table, and all of it was spit out of a miked Marhsall half-stack. Carl Crack walked onto the stage, his hair longer and wilder than I rememebred seeing in photos, and proceeded to manipulate a square guitar-shaped instrument, which in turn emitted the most awful [thus, wonderful] sounds. The new musician?dj?sequencer? of the ATR live experience, Nic Endo, came out with her hair up and some fierce lines of paint tattooing one side of her face. Soon, the entire concert hall was enveloped in standing-right- next-to-a-jet-turbine noise, swirling and rising to an impossible peak. People started to take notice.
Alec, in his austere tight black pants and blank black shirt combo, and Hanin, with her seemingly default black skirt/tights and long white shirt/sweater [all I remember ever seeing in pics live or press], took the stage, and the three MCs began to pump the crowd [and each other] up for what looked to be a wild ride. The grating noise subsided into some distinguishable beats and samples, Carl discarded the noise-guitar, and ATR launched into one of their best-known digital-punk anthems, "SICK TO DEATH."
By now, a weak parody of a mosh pit ebbed and flowed through the first few rows, and some metalheads at the front of the stage began to headbang/devilsign in rhythm. Then, things went wrong. Halfway into a verse, the MCs noticed that all vocals had cut out. Alec and co. tried to scream out to the crowd, but it was lost in the [unstoppable?] sequences and noise that continued on unerringly. Carl played with the guitar-box again. Within a few minutes, the vox were back, and luckily before ATR had decided to storm off the stage [as they have done at least once in the US].
The vocals were back, but the majority of people had begun to get jittery again. Random "you suck" and "bring out ministry" comments began to jump out from behind us, and the metalheads were getting repeatedly thrown off by the skittering beats and near-constant breaks in the music...we were thrown off as well: never having been to an ATR show, but with a friend that had been to 2 from previous tours, I still had a hard time moving to the beat. What might sound good on an album proved to be a mood-killer live: the music would build and get into a good, meaty sampled riff, or an absolutely vicious drum beat, only to be washed away by silence or a screeching halt. Enter unintelligible MC shrieking, building kick beat, and then the beats again. After half a dozen songs of this, I felt like I had sonic whiplash. Perhaps this was their intention all along.
After a few more songs, the sound died down, and Alec began to rant in his thick accent about how the government is trying to shut down subversives like ATR, and how we all should "Fuck the Government, Fuck the State, and [especially] Fuck the Police" while a lot of the crowd stood and looked puzzled or indifferent, or a mix of both. Most understood the final part about the police, though, and cheered in a vague anti-law enforcement response [perhaps in preparation for Ministry's "thieves" ;)]. He ended quoting Malcolm X, saying that ATR are not violent people, but that they will use violence against people who are violent with them.
Most of the second half of the set truly lacked in clarity, especially during tracks from the new record. Coincidence? Alec had started to use some different percussion in "60 SECOND WIPEOUT," and it showed live. The beats slipped into the midrange of noise, electronics, and guitar, moreso than on any album so far, and even the most ATR-familiar of us had trouble IDing the songs. Nic, disappearing from view, began twiddling knobs on the back of the gear rack more and more frequently as the show progressed. Alec took notice of the crowds bewildered state, but much too late, and his not-quite-frantic comments uttered to Nic yielded little change in the muddiness of the music. A wonderful exception to this was "GHOSTCHASE" [to my enjoyment], which was just as sharp with its cutting beats [and breaks!] as it is on the CD, and my friend and I responded in enthused fashion. Hopefully they noticed that at least a few people were still getting down this far into their show.
ATR slowly trickled offstage, and Nic stayed behind to re-insert the walls of turbine noise to mark the closing of their set. No one from ATR looked ecstatic leaving the stage. On a side note, my fiance and friend ran into the perturbed-looking Nic during the Ministry set, and they complimented her on the show, much to her surprise. Being in an electronic-noise band ourselves, we were familiar to their predicament, both crowd-response-wise and in re: to the pitfalls of live mixing. By the end of the set, my head felt submerged in water-- no pain, but just a wrapped-in-cotton feeling that let me knew that I had been sonically beaten up, but not in the way I had expected.
ATR's manifesto for the evening:
[in no particular order]
SICK TO DEATH
INTO THE DEATH
ATARI TEENAGE RIOT II
NO REMORSE
DESTROY 2000 YEARS OF CULTURE
FUTURE OF WAR
REVOLUTION ACTION
GHOSTCHASE
DIGITAL HARDCORE
NOT YOUR BUSINESS
