The atmosphere is filled with the sort of stern superauthoritarian regimentation that only the youthfully naive can get away with as drum loops clatter and Douglas' voice urges all manner of dreadful social conformity on the listener. Tracks like Join In The chant, Violent Playground and Let Your Body Learn (all from That Total Age) along with Control I'm Here and KIA (from Belief) emphasize the hard edge Nitzer Ebb had. Equally, there's scarcely any room for melody in this early material. The rhythms are the predominant theme over which Douglas' voice storms with all the subtlety of a tank in overdrive.

Small wonder then that while Sparks' keyboard player Russel Mael could get away with looking exactly like Hitler because his songs were funny, Nitzer Ebb were immediately pilloried for having the dress sense of collaborating Übergruppenfuher.

Showtime (Mute STUMM72) (1990), the band's next outing, built on the rhythmic pounding of their earlier work, but added a much needed element of sequencers. Given that their industrial contemporaries like Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Front 242 and Revolting Cocks were experimenting with the extreme edge of sound, Showtime seemed a little tame, yet it's still far more intense and experimental than most of the electronic music of the time and provides as much of an influence on the likes of Plastikman as the then developing House scene. Showtime also illustrates the band's debt to the likes of Jim Foetus in its co-opting of the blues on tracks like Nobody Knows, while the single Lightning Man, with its catchy oboe refrain, helped to define the industrial sound.

If Showtime repositioned Nitzer Ebb in the industrial firmament (i.e, it made them big in the States and fairly titchy in the UK), their follow up, 1991's Ebbhead (Mute STUMM88), confirmed that the pair were more than just a couple of can't-quite-grow-up school boys. Here their potential as pop icons is apparent for the first time. The melody that underpinned songs like Lightning Man comes to the foreground on tracks like I Give To You and there's much more of an emphasis on guitars and guitar sounds. There's even a tongue-in cheek reference to their playground origins on Sugar Sweet--which on reflection is anything but.

Next year's Big Hit (Mute STUMM118), their first album in three years, is an altogether rawer experience. the popish feel of Ebhead has been replaced by a darker, more disturbing edge, which suggests that a year's touring weirdness may have got to the pair. the addition of a real drummer gives it less of an automation feel, yet there's no evidence of any overt niceness seeping into the music. Rather, it's a fine return to what Nitzer Ebb do best, capturing that all expanding sense of brilliant madness you have when you're a scruffy ten-year-old and you know no one else's gang can touch yours and the world (or the playground) is your oyster.