One of a handful of crap photos I managed to get while violently throbbing & spasming to the motherfucking Ebb last night. Not a guitar in sight, just people enjoying the barrage of cryptic constructionist slogans and pristine industrial beats.
Regular readers of n0teeth Music Opinion Provider (A subdivision of the Mister Internet Dot Biz industrial complex) may be shocked to learn that popular beat combo Nitzer Ebb is a big hit around these parts. We may have mentioned it in passing once or twice. So when Chelmsford's dark lords of electronic body sleaze announced their first London date since 2022 we scrambled for our eCash with such haste we spilled the better part of a Pocari Sweat all over our MicroOffice RoadRunner.
The acquisition of tickets was not without a couple of initial misgivings, however. Firstly: "fabric?" asked n0teeth and a number of acquaintances, accompanied by an involuntary scrunching of nose & upper lip. Our collective experiences in that joint, both for clubbing and for weekday gigs, have been somewhat mixed. Both the 2nd best and 2nd worst Paranoid London shows this writer has seen were at fabric, as was the moment when it became apparent that Detroit electro space wizards Dopplereffekt had no intention of adding anything even faintly resembling a beat to the single, eerie synth note they were holding down, and that we were about to come up in the middle of a painfully dull ambient set.
Secondly, the gig announcement was shortly followed by Douglas McCarthy revealing that the Ebb would be playing without him due to health issues. Amidst ripples of sympathy and concern for the wellbeing of EBM's favourite dodgy wheeler-dealer uncle there were fears that Nitzer Ebb just wouldn't be quite the same without Doug's presence - prowling the stage like a used car salesman sizing up his prey - let alone his voice. n0teeth may or may not have privately worried that some vastly inferior EBM frontman - say, a German named Steve N perhaps - might be called in as a replacement. As we shall see, these fears were entirely misplaced, but like Jean-Luc de Meyer's announcement that Front 242's upcoming tour will be his last, the news of McCarthy's illness still served as a sobering reminder that the godlike man-machines of EBM are only meat and blood like the rest of us (shout out to our fallen soldier Gabi Delgado-Lopez).
n0teeth & lady wife arrived at fabric just in time to catch the end of Faux Naif's set. Nitzer Ebb have been getting better at choosing support acts every time, and the few jams we managed to hear the London-based DJ drop the needle on (including the extended, extra percussive mix of Every Day Is Halloween and some marvellous concoction of massive gated kick drums which has since been IDed as Aircrash Bureau - Time To Die) proved she fit the bill like a Motorola 2900 fits a company whip.
Broken English Club opening for Nitzer Ebb? It seems so obvious we couldn't believe it hadn't been done before. Oliver Ho brought his trademark cocktail of jarring drones and clinical beat precision, getting quite a few bodies moving, but leaving a few punters muttering "a bit samey". For n0teeth's money, however, this was one of BEC's better outings, aided to some extent by fabric's immaculate sound system.
At bang on the advertised time, Haujobb's Daniel Myer and O.G. founding ebbhead David Gooday took to the stage. It's showtime, ladies and gentlemen! A shapeshifting synth riff mutated into Control I'm Here, and all of a sudden, here he was: Bon Harris, as we lived and breathed.
Already somewhat hoarse, parched and drenched in sweat by the end of the opening salvo, n0teeth fancied we could possibly hear strains of Captivate being teased, but before we knew it we were onto Hearts And Minds, followed by a devastating, slightly sped-up Blood Money (altogether now: AH BELIEVE TH' BAHBLE / AN' AH BELIEVE WHAT GAWD SAID). A band that opens with three songs in a row from the same album must have a fair bit of belief in the quality of their product, but when the album in question is virtually wall-to-wall bangers who's complaining?
"Brought your dancing boots have ya London?", Mr Harris winks at the seething, surging crowd, any doubts about him standing in for Douglas by now lying in dust on the floor, crushed underfoot like so much spilt MDMA. Nor will I ever underestimate fabric again: the sound system did justice to Nitzer Ebb like no other venue's, every beat hitting hard and clean like an uppercut from a titanium fist.
Captivate finally made an appearance, after slowly uncoiling like a snake throughout the first half of the set. n0teeth looked around ourselves, wondering what the total age of the crowd might be: at least two generations of goths, assorted techno fiends and clodhopping rivet-oafs such as ourselves were all stomping the floor with gusto. Something changed for Nitzer Ebb in the last decade or so, going from "big in Germany" cult act to (rightly) highly-regarded dance music machine bringing fun for all the family.
Finally wrapping their heads around their own influence on dance music a few years ago, and taking some of it back, appears to have given Nitzer Ebb a new lease on life. It's not that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed every single Ebb gig I've seen, from windy outdoor stages at goth festivals in Germany to the top floor at Electrowerkz, but the last three - retooled to suit a dance club environment - have been unbelievably fucking good. Even songs I don't particularly care for are transformed into instant bangers by the tight new arrangements - I Give To You sounding startlingly good as an encore. And anybody I've ever tried to convince that Family Man is a stone cold Ebb classic once you strip the guitars away would've surely seen sense after hearing it tonight.
One song that, in n0teeth's opinion, could and probably should have been omitted from the set was Lightning Man. Not only is it especially suited to Doug's particular vocal delivery, the lyrics are a very personal account of his struggles with alcoholism. It was the only song in tonight's set that Bon couldn't quite do justice to (not that we in the crowd didn't give it a good go) and, come to mention it, we didn't hear him mention his ailing comrade Douglas at any point. We can only assume (hope) that McCarthy, ever the consummate pro, instructed his bandmates to play like nobody was missing, and give us screaming, sweating, stomping animals exactly what we wanted.
n0teeth speaks for the crowd when I say that what we all wanted was some more fire from the first album, and the Ebb delivered. The writhing mass of bodies at fabric needed no encouragement to Join In The Chant; some of us never left in the first place.
Next came Let Your Body Learn and, as sure as night follows day, Murderous. The snake was now fully uncoiled: from the dark, sinister undertones of the opening songs to these stridently upbeat, almost militaristically positive floor-fillers, we had witnessed three showmen with an impeccable sense of timing pace their set with skill and precision, keeping us all on high alert before bringing out the big guns.
And, after the aforementioned encore, that was it. The trio that had held us hypnotised, incessantly moving to the beat of their drum for the past hour or so had said their goodnights and left the stage, leaving n0teeth's ears ringing, legs aching, sweat gushing and throat hoarsening. I like to think that all of us - band and punters alike - have done Douglas proud tonight, and that he will return to grace the stage some day soon.
They may almost never play any of their non-album bangers from the 80s (as they proved at Village Underground a few years ago, Warsaw Ghetto fits the pace of their current set like a Rover 213 fits a VIP parking spot at the Olympia Motorail) and the way they pronounce their own band name might be at odds with how literally everybody else pronounces it, but the Essex boys (and their German pal) are still one of the most thrilling, energetic and powerful live acts in electronic music, and one that will bring together just about everybody we know - friends, associates & raving buddies old and new - every time they play a show. God bless the beautiful bald bastards.
Nitzer Ebb @ fabric, 30th May 2024: setlist
- Control I'm Here
- Hearts and Minds
- Blood Money
- Payroll
- For Fun
- Family Man
- Captivate
- Lightning Man
- Once You Say
- Come Alive
- Join In The Chant
- Down On Your Knees
- Let Your Body Learn
- Murderous
- (encore) I Give To You