1990: "Fun to Be Had", Nitzer Ebb

Coming off like a cross between the hip hop-informed Meat Beat Manifesto and the new wave-steeped A Split Second, "Fun to Be Had" either sounds like a groundbreaking classic or an aggro version of "Wham Rap", depending on one's post-millennial sensibilities. My own affections fall somewhere between those two extremes, but if anything these last few posts should show the widening gulf between many of the "old guard" and the new in the EBM / industrial overlap.

By 1990, many of the groups formed in the mid-80s found themselves floundering between heightened exposure of their musical niche and the skeletal, minimalist songwriting that had won them favor in the 80s but had since fallen out of style; not all, certainly, and many would rebound later with bigger budgets and forward thinking producers, but in the meantime there were plenty of stilted throwbacks like "Fun to Be Had": endearing yet fossilized, stagnant yet timeless, classic yet decidedly not...