A quick one before the Christmas rush begins and you filthy peasants all start pressuring man for our end-of-year list. This evening I casually flung on a couple of old albums (well, the only two albums) by Andy LaPlegua aka Ole Anders Olsen's short-lived side project Panzer AG.
Taking the stage in 2004 (just after the end of Icon of Coil and just before Combichrist started getting massive) but mostly dormant since 2006 (just when Combichrist was arguably at the peak of its popularity), I can't think of any other industrial/EBM band that has dropped off so hard between two albums.
This Is My Battlefield (2004) took all of Front Line Assembly's favourite cyberpunk-warrior-making-a-last-futile-stand-on-a-post-apocalyptic-war-torn-wasteland cliches and ramped up the Nordic melodramatics.
2006's follow-up, Your World Is Burning, kicked off with the daft but reasonably enjoyable 'Aenimal' ("Crash test dummies fill me with drugs/Let's see if I'm inflatable") but swiftly careened downhill from there. A dire exercise in electro-rock schlock that already sounded dated in 2006 acts as a compost bin for all the lyrics that Herr Olsen apparently considered too lowbrow even for Combichrist. Execrable cuts like "Machine Gun Go-Go" make Faderhead's Coke For My Ass sound like avant garde poetry.
This Is My Battlefield, however, still holds up better than anything the large Norwegian has released since his Icon of Coil days. The martial drum programming, ludicrously over-the-top orchestration and roaring vocals (which commendably sidestep the usual "harsh" EBM style) make for a satisfyingly hard and crunchy listening experience, perhaps as a deliberate contrast with the lighter futurepop sounds of Icon of Coil.
Andy LP may have subsequently taken the toughguy act to embarrassing extremes but as an attempt to balance Icon of Coil with something a fair bit darker and more aggressive This Is My Battlefield succeeded where Combichrist overcompensated. Far from a regular favourite of ours but still worth the occasional re-spin.
Choice cuts: Chemical Breed (acid a-fucking-go-go),
Battlefield (majestic), Bereit (features an utterly savage
drum break on the "chorus").
Offcuts: When Death Embrace Me. Bad goth nonsense, on a
cheesy Schaffel beat to boot.