Apoptygma Berzerk- You and Me Against the World

With his latest guitar-fueled release, Apoptygma Berzerk's Stephan Groth seems to have severed any remaining ties he might once have had to the EBM scene. Perhaps this is a good thing, though. Of the three bands who ushered in the new era of futurepop, Apoptygma Berzerk was arguably the most overrated, possessed of neither Covenant's melancholic power nor VNV Nation's majestic melodrama. In any case, Groth seems comfortable in his new role as nascent pop star, and his music is all the better for it. With fuzzy guitars helping to mitigate the clinical precision of drum machine and sequencer on tracks like "In This Together," the occasional inconsistencies of Groth's voice seem less glaring and more appropriate, and the break-up anthem "Back On Track" can be forgiven for sounding a bit whiny, given the fact that it's essentially an emo song. That wouldn't fly nearly as well in Apoptygma Berzerk's EBM days. Neither, for that matter, would Groth's cover of Kim Wilde's "Cambodia," at least not without significantly more irony. Though the band has seen fit to include a remix of "Love To Blame" done in the more "classic" Apoptygma Berzerk style, it seems little more than a bone begrudgingly tossed to the slavering jaws of diehard fans. The ugly secret those fans are loathe to admit, however, is that this album is the best thing Groth has ever done, far better better than his purely electronic work, even if it does have less in common with Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb than with HIM and The Killers.

Visit Stephan Groth at www.apoptygma-berzerk.com.