Atari Teenage Riot | Is This Hyperreal?

Dim Mak (2011)
By BARRY THOMPSON  |  June 22, 2011
2.0 2.0 Stars

atrmain2

Atari Teenage Riot were awesome in the '90s, but not because of their anti-authoritarianism. It was nice to be reminded that Nazis are shitheads and of how it would totally suck if an omnipresent government surveillance network obliterated all individual freedoms. But the best of ATR's digital hardcore sounded like a supercomputer crashing and imploding: a danceable cacophony that demanded everyone go bonkers at clandestine warehouse parties. They weren't really asking anyone to think. Returning after 11 years of officially not existing, what's left of ATR could've focused their energies on kicking lots of ass. Instead, they indulge spoken-wordy, freshman-year non-profundities that mostly siphon energy from the get-up-and-fuck-some-shit-up ethos present on a few okay tracks like "Activate" and "Codebreaker." "Black Flags" is a razorblade across the scab Rage Against the Machine left on our collective memories, but "Re-Arrange Your Synapses" is the worst offender. "The Nazis would've strangled Einstein in his crib if they had known!" shouts Nic Endo midway through. Good thing Einstein was a middle-aged man by the time they took over Germany, and they never got the chance.
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