Keeping a record of the past is a very human thing to do, preserving mementos and snapshots to chart one's maturation to go back and re-examine the past in order to make sense of the present and prepare for the future.

But for Douglas McCarthy and Bon Harris, the driving force behind Nitzer Ebb, photographs and souvenirs weren't enough. They've kept a sonic diary of sort ever since they began the band in 1983 as a reaction against the typical teenage boredom in their hometown of Chelmsford, England. With schoolmate David Gooday as an accomplice, the two, who cheerfully admit they couldn't play a single instrument with any sort of proficiency, picked up synthesizers and drum machines and set to work making music that was designed as much to provoke and annoy as it was to express their singular artistic ideas. And on all levels it worked.

Since the release of their first single, Isn't It Funny How Your Body Works in 1984, to the current album Ebbhead, their fourth, Nitzer Ebb has created a history of experimentation, growth, and change, from their initial beats-and-chants minimalism to the current state of affairs, which encompasses a myriad of styles, a plethora of influences, and a broad spectrum of emotional content and contexts. In essence, they've grown up on record.

"There's no denying the fact that we're growing up", McCarthy says. "The more abstract and what seemed at the time to be more profound type of lyrics were really hand-in-hand with being confused and young. That kind of directionless anger, and directionlessness in general, was what we fed upon both musically and lyrically. As you get older, you start to become tired of that, and directing what you're doing toward certain aspects of your life.

"The older I've gotten the more I've realized how little things can actually be changed", he adds. "That may be defeatist, but I think the point of our lyrics now, more than ever, is to refer people to certain events, and to the things that can be changed in the environment around us. And in turn, if people can read anything into that, they can change the personal environment around themselves, and collectively it can become a big thing. In the past, we tried to give a global, universal instruction or question mark, or exclamation point" he laughs.

The instant club success Isn't It Funny How Your Body Works, released on the Power of Voice Communications label, led to five more singles over the next year, and to the band signing to Mute Records in the UK and Geffen in the United States. 1987 saw the release of the first album, That Total Age, three increasingly successful singles - Let Your Body Learn, Murderous and Join In The Chant - and the beginning of their working relationship with producer Flood, who remixed Join In The Chant. The following year, Gooday left the band to be replaced soon after with fellow Chelmsfordite Julian Beeston, and Nitzer Ebb toured Europe with Mute labelmates Depeche Mode. Following the tour, they went back into the studio with Flood, emerging victorious with Belief, which became a staple in dance clubs on both sides of the Atlantic.

A 1989 world tour exposed Nitzer Ebb to a variety of cultures and experiences that went into the making of the third album Showtime, an album that proved to be the turning point in the Nitzer Ebb sound. Early releases focused almost entirely on percussive impact and minimalist vocal message. By the time Belief came about, they were becoming distracted by the concept of melody, and on Showtime, they had discovered how to incorporate it without losing their characteristic aggressive stamp. It was also the first time Nitzer Ebb stepped out from behind the curtain of emotional reticence and allowed people to see the human beings behind the music. It was a successful manoeuvre; the double single Fun To Be Had/Getting Closer peaked at the number two slot on Billboards dance chart, proving that the band are destined to make their mark in the USA.

The two years since have been very prolific for Harris and McCarthy. The release of Showtime was followed by a major tour with Depeche Mode, which solidified their popularity worldwide, and the US particularly. Then at the tour's end, they went straight into the studio in London and began laying down tracks for this summer's As Is EP, a warm-up of sorts to the current Ebbhead album. The four songs on the mini-album marked a further progression in Nitzer Ebb's ever-changing sound. The As Is EP expanded on the melodic structures they had experimented with on Showtime, and demonstrated lyrically the fact that they have, as McCarthy says, grown up.

"We did the EP because we had quite a few ideas in mind that we wanted to try out, a lot of progression in melody and song structure", Harris explains. "Once we'd done the EP, there was some questions about where the album was going to go, whether we'd sort of progress too much on the EP and whether we could expand on that. We're really happy with it, because now we can look back on the EP and we can see how far the album really did progress from that.

"We've always moved on and progressed, and we've never fallen easily into any one category", he adds. "And they do try. Someone asked me the other day when we were doing the show at the Reading Festival, if I felt we had any contemporaries on the show, and I said no, I don't think we have. But I think its good for us, because we're always innovating, and it gives us the energy to carry on. Its a good yardstick, the fact that no one can really put us into this neat little box, because there's always something about us that doesn't fit, or goes over the boundaries of what they're trying to confine us in. I find it quite stimulating that we're always out there on our own. I think sometimes you do pay for it, in terms of commercial success, but with the advent of Ebbhead, I think we've managed to twist listenability around to our way of thinking."

According to McCarthy, part of their constant progression lies in the fact that their attention span usually lasts only for the duration of one album. "Every time we finished an album and then went on tour with that album, whether its the process of playing in front of people or just being able to listen to the music we've made in a much more retrospective way, we tend to rebel against what we've just done", he says. "From the first album to the second album to the third album, its pretty much straightforward rebellion.

"With the first album, we didn't spend much time getting the tracks down, so with the second, we spent an awful lot of time. With the third album we felt that we'd lost some kind of human edge, so we spent a lot of time putting that back in. Ebbhead was really a combination of everything we've learned."

The past year's work has had its educational side, as well, on the EP, Nitzer Ebb worked not only with "honorary band member" Flood, PK and Depeche Mode's Alan Wilder (who co-produced Ebbhead with Flood) on the mixes, but with Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman and film composer Barry Adamson as well. Working with Adamson has its ironic touch; McCarthy credits one of the bass player's former bands, The Birthday Party, as being a primary influence on Nitzer Ebb, along with Bauhaus and DAF. And the EP was a luxury in another sense; he says it was done "definitely for the fun of it, because it was our idea to do it. We weren't under any pressure to do anything. We took that step because we wanted to experiment with melody, and we knew that album was going to be a leap for people. So this EP would sort of ease people into it, its a prelim to the album".

With the release of the very first Nitzer Ebb product, the band was immediately slotted into the minimalist/industrial category, a tag they have been unable to completely get rid of, despite the changes in sound over the past three albums. It may have been minimal then, but it is not minimal now it has expanded to incorporate not only pop song structures and immediately identifiable melody lines, but elements of everything from Big Band sounds to blues to heavy metal-like rhythm structures. Nitzer Ebb has left minimalism to its imitators.

With the advent of Ebbhead, as Harris put it, that is very likely to change. Nitzer Ebb has grown up, and the music has grown up with them. The warning shot has been fired, and the battle for hearts and minds is about to begin.