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Youth brigade

ATR demand attention

by Douglas Wolk

Atari Teenage Riot are everything your mother is afraid rock and roll could be: loud, nasty, dissonant, fast, simple-minded, hyped up on God knows what, and on their way into your pants. The young German trio's recipe couldn't be easier: an assaulting combination of sped-up breakbeats of drum 'n' bass, distorted riffs ripped straight off one classic punk rock or speed-metal record or another, bellowed sloganeering ("Destroy 2000 years of culture!" "Deutschland has gotta die!"), and bleepy videogame sounds. The result is explosive.

Alec Empire, the confrontational mastermind behind Atari Teenage Riot and the Digital Hardcore record label, describes what they do as "functional music, not pop music." His motto: "Riot sounds produce riots." His stated goal: "We do not want to change the system, we have to destroy it."

Empire started the band with MC Carl Crack and bloodcurdling screamer Hanin Elias when he was just 19, as a counterattack on the fascism he saw overtaking the European dance scene. He's made his politics explicit with tracks like "Hetzjagd auf Nazis" ("Hunt the Nazis Down"). And if his sloganeering sometimes seems to be more about destruction than about proposing constructive alternatives, at least it makes a hell of an interesting racket: the trio's frenzied shows are full-sensory assaults, with strobe lights, hyperspeed beats set at stun volume, and Empire, Elias, and Crack bounding around the stage and yelling.

Atari Teenage Riot -- who are opening for Rage Against the Machine and Wu-Tang Clan next Thursday at Great Woods -- are the flagship band of Digital Hardcore Recordings, a Berlin/London-based label, co-founded by Empire, that pumps out EPs and albums by like-minded DJs and groups. In the US, Digital Hardcore is affiliated with the Beastie Boys' label Grand Royal, which released Burn, Berlin, Burn!, a full-length CD compilation of Atari Teenage Riot singles, earlier this year.

Empire, it turns out, is as in-your-face (and full of exclamation points) by e-mail as he is on record. "Everyone who nearly feels like we do should scream it!!!!!!!" he writes. "Let's start riots! Destroy Christian morals! Set police cars on fire! Celebrate girls! Do not vote! Sex! Get alive! It just takes seconds! Don't be so boring!!!! Come on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you are cynical about it you're right-wing! What are you waiting for? DO IT!"

Rhetoric like that certainly doesn't invite rational discourse. And it's not the only example of Empire's using vehemence and evasion to deflect a tough query. Take the question of where Atari Teenage Riot's riffs come from. One of the salient tunes on Burn, Berlin, Burn!, the incendiary "Fuck All," is essentially the Bad Brains' hardcore classic "Pay To Cum" embellished with breakbeats and some new lyrics. Did anti-racist agitator Empire give these African-American punk pioneers co-writing credit?

His response: "It's no Bad Brains sample (I played the riff on my guitar). Those chords are in another key anyway. But it's true it's similar to `Pay To Cum.' Since I was young I really loved the early Bad Brains. So it was an influence on me (even if I didn't think of it when I wrote `Fuck All'). It was not even a reference point. . . . The authorities use copyright to gain control over the electronic-music underground. . . . Mainstream rock is repeating itself over and over and nothing happens. If they would force the copyright laws on these so-called composers, today's commercial rock would maybe sound like jungle, techno, perhaps digital hardcore. But as we know, in capitalism it's not about fairness and originality. . . . So if you ask me it's `Fuck copyright!' I hate laws. Anarchy. Fuck all this. Yeah, let's put a copyright on the word `love' and sue everyone who is using it!. . . . For me, the whole copyright thing is not logical at all. It doesn't protect the artist any more."

Despite his self-righteousness -- or perhaps because of it -- Empire's youthful energy is formidable, full of the kind of invigorating musical and political fervor that lit the fuse of punks like Bad Brains almost two decades ago. Atari's unremitting noise attack may send you scrambling for cover or draw you into its hyperkinetic chaos; in either case it demands to be noticed. Empire has an agenda, and he's going to make people pay attention. "The industry always tries to turn every youth movement into a joke. We are sick of this! We could just sit back and wait until the system implodes. But we can't wait -- we are too young!"

Atari Teenage Riot join Rage Against the Machine and the Wu-Tang Clan at Great Woods next Thursday, August 21. Call 423-NEXT.