Arriving on the U.S. music scene from Germany two years ago, Atari Teenage Riot have accomplished three seemingly impossible tasks. They've wedded punk rock and electronica. They've made a media splash singing about left-wing politics. And most impressively, they've performed electronic music with more wild abandon and pure energy than most rock acts. Riot chief Alec Empire, 26, through his Berlin-based record label Digital Hardcore, has put anarchy back on the map. Backed by Grand Royal in America, Empire and his multi-ethnic, boy-grrrl bandmates -- Nic Endo, Carl Crack and Hanin Elias -- have recently released 60 Second Wipe Out in the hope of strengthening the revolution. As they proclaim in "Revolution Action": "It's time to live and it's time to die . . . "

You've said that Atari Teenage Riot and Digital Hardcore spew poison into the system like a parasite. How?

The idea of this band is to spread the mid-range frequencies that cause an adrenaline rush and a lot of aggression. People feel excited and euphoric about this music. We believe if we reach people on the emotional level, emotions create thoughts, and that will spur them to action. Also, we are offending very conservative people. By providing what we call anarchist energy, people can come together and make a political change possible. We put fuel to the fire.

Do you worry that kids who listen will feed off the music's energy but ignore the revolutionary aspect?

A lot of people ask me that, but strangely enough I've never come across people who take the music as just entertainment. In America we met lots of 16-year-olds whose first contact with these ideas is Atari Teenage Riot, so it's a different situation. I don't want to judge people in the audience. But it's not like people are having a nice dance party to a track like "Start the Riots" or "Death of a President D.I.Y.!"

With the collapse of the Soviet system, even Vietnam and China are trading with the U.S. You guys are maybe the only ones in pop culture screaming for an end to capitalism. Do you feel all alone out there?

No. The capitalist system has failed. More and more people live like s---. Capitalism has no future. It means conformity. I reject this American lifestyle completely. There are many great people in America standing up for something good, but the basic thing is just consuming. People believe that they have a free choice, but they only have a consumer's choice.

Solutions exist. Corporations keep holding new ideas down, but stopping this process only leads to death. We're all gonna die, it's really simple. We have to reorganize our society and the way we live. Otherwise, we're gonna die. We live on the back of the third world. I can't agree with that.

What do you envision capitalism being replaced by?

An anarchist society without a power structure where everybody is taking self-responsibility. Capitalist values won't mean anything, so crime will be reduced to very small levels. Everybody can have everything. But people have to accept other people being different. And the destruction of nature, why is this happening? Just so people can drive faster cars? It doesn't make sense.

ATR has added a new member, Nic Endo. How did that come about?

We tried with this new record to capture the energy we built up during two years of touring. Nic Endo came into the band for the Beck tour that we did. I was singing more and couldn't control the machines at the same time. Doing these shows, she brought another aggression level to the music. We really wanted to have that on the record. We always want spontaneous live energy instead of some cleaned-up programmed computer music that is not causing any emotions.

What machines do you use to make the music?

We use an Atari computer as a sequencer -- that's why it's in the name. We use a sampler and a Roland drum machine. But we don't take the Atari out for shows. If it's live hardcore, the computer would break down.

Are the guitars on the record played or sampled?

All the guitars are played by myself. All of the noise is created by us. But we want to keep that option of manipulating the sound in the samplers, of reversing guitars and pitching them down, all these things that make Atari Teenage Riot sound so different. Only on one track was there a guest guitarist, "Your Uniform (Does Not Impress Me!)" -- Dino Cazares from Fear Factory played on that.

What are your long term goals for ATR and Digital Hardcore?

Atari Teenage Riot is a spontaneous thing, it could end any day. People should know this. DHR is attacking the mainstream structure, even though it's just selling records. We create freedom inside the label -- creative freedom. We'll have a big impact in the coming years. We make no compromise with our music. It is exactly how we want it to sound. Two years ago, MTV Europe started playing the videos from our first album that they had rejected. They said, people are into this, we have to play it. We didn't compromise to get on MTV. We give a s--- about them. But if people change for us, then it is an achievement.

So you were performing in Berlin at an anti-fascist demonstration against the NATO bombings, and the police attacked. Then a full-scale riot broke out. What happened?

There were 30,000 people there and at the beginning it was peaceful. There were 5,000 policemen looking like they were waiting for something, to find a reason [to attack]. Their facial expressions behind their helmets gave us a real enemy vibe. They began attacking demonstrators. We saw policementhrowing stones at us. Demonstrators were tolerant for a long time. A lot of people were already seriously injured and others were holding up their hands saying, "We don't want this to escalate." But the police just went for it, breaking shop windows and throwing tear gas.

We are normally against violence, but if the government doesn't leave us another option, we're not gonna let people go down to the ground and nobody does anything. If there is no other way -- and more and more it seems that ways to express your opinion are being reduced by the police -- it is asituation we can't accept.

RODD McLEOD
(May 18, 1999)