Atari Teenage Riot existed at a previously unimaginable fulcrum of genres, using every ingredient they could find to come up with an ecstatically assaultive squall. Their twisting, roiling blare had elements of pounding industrial, of mouth-foaming hardcore punk, of brutally fast hardcore rave, of scraping electronic noise, of thrash-metal bombast, of wriggling drill-n-bass, of Bomb Squad-style attack-beats. Their specific chaotic combination added up to German-accented ridiculousness ("Deutschland! Has gotta! Diiieeee!") screamed over hyperspeed 808 pounds and digitally treated guitar fuzz; it seemed scientifically engineered to annoy as many people as possible. It was impossible to dance or talk or read or drive or do anything else while they were playing. I tried so hard to like them, and I mostly succeeded, even though my friends would give me tons of shit anytime I played their records.
For a brief moment in the mid-1990s, the group seemed like the future. They released records on Grand Royal, they opened the much-touted Rage Against the Machine/Wu-Tang Clan tour, and they spearheaded their own little mini-scene with their Digital Hardcore label. But after 11 years of inactivity, it's pretty clear that they didn't exactly change the conversation. You can detect pieces of their style in a few musical movements that have come along since: the Teutonic-accented confrontationalism of electroclash, the low-budget rabble-rousing computer-pop of early M.I.A., the squealing brickwalled dance-metal of Justice. But Atari Teenage Riot didn't transcend their moment. So their new album, Is This Hyperreal?, is a curious thing indeed: a nostalgic work that evokes an idea of the future that turned out to be absurd. Listening to it is like watching a remake of Johnny Mnemonic.
The reconstituted Atari Teenage Riot of 2011 isn't really the same group from that mid-90s moment. Unhinged hypeman Carl Crack died in 2001. Lead screamer Hanin Elias is long gone, though replacement Nic Endo sounds almost exactly like her. There's also a new member: laughably clumsy American MC CX Kidtronik (sample lyrics: "My fist! My fist! I bang my fist! Against a concrete wall!"). But even with a ton of membership turnover, Atari Teenage Riot sound very, very similar to what mastermind Alec Empire first unleashed a decade and a half ago. Then again, it's not like those early records left a whole lot of room for aesthetic advancement (what, were they going to find a new genre of noisy assault music to incorporate?). But it's still pretty weird that this band's overwhelming fury has not mellowed in the slightest since they've been away. They're not teenagers anymore, but you'd never know it from listening to them.
That's not exactly a compliment. Teenagers experience politics in absolutes; red-faced sloganeering makes a lot more sense to a human ball of hormones than nuanced discourse ever could. But when a grown man roars, "They want to turn the Internet into their personal global chessboard!" it just sounds goofy (who's they?). Some of the lyrics on Is This Hyperreal? push those tendencies to dizzy extremes. Consider, for example, this: "Capitalism, you're a little fat man in a big expensive car hanging over a ravine here!" Or this bit of anti-Internet agitprop: "When the authorities catch up with us, and they will, it's not such a good idea to leave traces and expose your whole network at once!" (Yes, Atari Teenage Riot have their own iPhone app. Why do you ask?) Musically, too, it's the same hyperspeed noise-blast format they've been working forever, beyond the odd moment of Crystal Castles-style mutated video-game bloop. When "Shadow Identity" turns into deeply pretty M83-ish epic synthpop for a minute, it's a legit shock: This band learned a new trick! But it's just for a few seconds at the end of the song, and then it's over.
Redundant as it may be, though, Is This Hyperreal? succeeds simply as unintentional nostalgia, at least for someone who experienced the band the first time around. Opening track "Activate!", for instance, is pretty much Crystal Method-style big beat, but with more guitar fuzz and screaming, and it's just fun. The fact that Atari Teenage Riot still exist in any form, and that they're still making these sputtering tantrums, is almost admirable. They're gloriously silly anachronisms, and I'm not sorry to have them back in my life. My friends probably aren't too happy, though.
