#90s ebm

Armageddon Dildos - “East West” Totentanz, Volume II: The History of Zoth Ommog Song released in 1990. Compilation released in 1997. EBM / Electro-Industrial / Industrial Dance

In the late 80s and early 90s, EBM (electronic body music) was a genre that was popular among underground clubgoers in a handful of European countries. This aggressive brand of percussion-driven, made for the dance floor, industrial music was especially in-demand in Germany, in part thanks to the label Zoth Ommog. Based in Frankfurt, Zoth Ommog gave rise to some of EBM and industrial music’s most celebrated acts. One of those acts was Armageddon Dildos, a duo from the city of Kassel, just two hours north of Frankfurt. The group’s name is a wonderful slang term for intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

Having debuted at the tail-end of the Cold War, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the duo’s first single, East West, is a piece of sexual and political tongue-in-cheekery. With abrasive kicks, clanks, and snares, Dirk Krause’s thick, acid-drenched, blipping synths, and some spoken word vocal samples, Uwe Kunka recounts a random sexual encounter with a woman in a park near Moscow’s Red Square, claiming it’s good to have sex in a park in the USSR.

The song, though crude, appears to be a metaphor for citizens of the Eastern and Western Blocs uniting. Kanka, from West Germany, and the woman, from the USSR, are supposed to be mortal enemies but their encounter reveals that they’re simply just humans with carnal instincts. Their nationalities are irrelevant. The propaganda and the politically-designated barriers and divisions that try to prevent their love are ridiculous and inane.