Atari Teenage Riot – The Future Of War

Released March 17th, 1997 on Digital Hardcore Recordings

It’s difficult to talk about Atari Teenage Riot without understanding one key concept:  that Atari Teenage Riot are punk as fuck.  The idea was emblazoned on the name of their own private record label:  digital hardcore.  This is anarchist computer crust, William Gibson futurist punk that smells of dank alleys and crack.  “Sick To Death” captures this divide particularly well:  it starts off with a traditional punk guitar riff straight out of 1980 and slowly bleeds a drum n bass rhythm track in until the booming, distorted 808 bass/kick combo takes over everything and the shouting begins.  The band themselves were what frog kiddies have nightmares about, the sort of antifa kids who ensured that if there was a Nazi present, they were going to get punched.  They began, in fact, as an old school way to troll Nazis in their native Germany; one of their first releases was a song called “Hunt Down The Nazis!” The Future Of War didn’t spare in the left-wing rhetoric, either, drawing influence from the impersonal nature of modern warfare as evidenced by the First Gulf War.  Songs like “Deutschland (Has Gotta Die)” and “Destroy 2000 Years Of Culture” helped the album get listed in Germany as not to be advertised or sold to minors.  It’s the fountainhead of the genre of digital hardcore (naturally) and a precursor to the sort of twisted noise terrorism that Death Grips has engaged in.