Atari Teenage Riot – Burn, Berlin, Burn! – Interview

Atari Teenage Riot

Burn, Berlin, Burn! (Digital Hardcore/Grand Royal)
An interview with Alec Empire
by Scott Hefflon

Blending punk and techno the way you do, do you find American audiences expect you to be entirely different than you are?
Most people expect us to be very loud, very noisy. That’s the very strange thing in the States – people don’t make the connection between us and techno. In Europe, techno is very big, so everyone tries to compare us with techno dance music. We don’t want to be that at all. All that rave stuff is stupid. It’s not really happening over here, and that’s good.

Is it that American audiences are more open-minded, or is it that they are just receptive to this “new thing?”
Perhaps it’s that it’s new here. They relate to the energy the way they relate to punk. In Europe, the crowds watched it emerge and develop, Atari Teenage Riot and the other Digital Hardcore bands, so it didn’t hit them in the face all at once the way it did here. I wouldn’t say it’s that American audiences are more open-minded, it’s that they have less information.

Do you find audiences getting into the lyrics and the message, or just the energy of the music?
It’s surprising how many people pay attention to the politics, but, of course, at the live show you can’t hear everything or understand what we’re saying. But it’s good that people over here can identify with our stuff.

Especially seeing as how some of the songs are about experiences not related to American youth culture.
Well, only some of it is specific. A song like “Deutschland (Has Gotta Die!)” is an anti-nationalist statement, and I think that’s something Americans can relate to. They hear what we’re singing about, but then they project it onto their situation, their lives. Then they judge it on their terms, by their conditions, and they start to question their own surroundings. “Deutschland…” is against the new, up-coming nationalism taking place in Germany since the reunification. It led to racism and started a whole generation of young people who don’t criticize the past. They are becoming proud of Germany and bits and pieces of WWII, and when these things become accepted it creates a very dangerous lifestyle. Nothing foreign is accepted anymore because the unemployment rate is so high. It’s the highest in our history since the war. The government needs to give something else to the people, but, in this case, it causes more civil problems. Even in smaller towns, the neo-Nazi movement has increased four times in size in the last four years. The whole vibe of the country is changing. Everyone is becoming so right wing, that’s why we want to destroy it.

I only have the cardboard wallet promo CD so I never got the lyrics…
All of our records have lyric sheets. Always. There’s a lot of information in the songs, much like constantly switching channels on the TV. But even when you switch between channels, there is a theme.

Despite the chaotic blur of sound and images, there is a recurring theme, an overall message.
The whole capitalist system doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s a minority of people getting richer. People begin to see this is a fake democracy in which industry is connected to the government. It’s the same few who decide, with their own best interests in mind, what the next steps are going to be.

Do you have an alternative system in mind?
I’m an anarchist. I don’t want any power structures, no minority of people forcing laws upon me, no police forces to execute the decisions of the few in power, no prisons… I know that if the system were to break down overnight, it would be a mess. Chaos would reign, but only for a while. Even so, I would prefer the chaos to living in a prison, because that’s what it feels like. People think they are free, but they aren’t. People who cannot live by the rules set by others end up homeless in the streets, in jail, in psychiatric hospitals, or ostracized by the people around them. The government uses the schools to train us, the police to intimidate us, IDs, cards, and badges to re-establish a hierarchy and maintain class order, credit and computerized records to follow an individual from birth to death…

You’re not anti-technology, are you?
Um, no. Some of my old punk friends have become hippies, moved to India, and live without anything. I don’t think that changes anything, and it doesn’t communicate a change to anyone else. Perhaps someone could take an acoustic guitar and have the same message as us, but I don’t think it would be as powerful. Maybe it would, but I don’t think the time is right for that approach. Those are the wrong tools for the job. For us, digital hardcore is using the same technology as the system itself, but using it as a weapon against it.