What seems a bare cupboard for the one band you just can’t Google turns out to be an old coldwave trick: Lull the listener to sleep with hypnotizing weird-wave minimal synth and wait… and wait… and wait. Then what? Well, I guess you make another tape. Until then, German Army have me in the palm of their hairy hands, their Martian Church XX-style sludge-vocals reminding me of that time I’s probed by aliens. (I swear! Ma told me if’n I lie I’ll be in hot water, so don’t tell on me!) Their frothy chemical brew is a strange, pungent one that no one should try at home: Stack a uncooperative drum machine on top of a shit-house synth, echo-killed vox, and maybe a bass line and see how much your version of this sucks. How do they do it? This is one of those tapes you listen to mouth-ajar; the 39 Clocks of mini-synth-wave, German Army are. The end of Side A even mimics a tape being eaten. You’ll keep checking and checking. What an idiot! Bruce Hart is watching approvingly from heaven (What? He’s alive? Man…), not to mention Wet Hair. Those nice Raccoo-oo-oon boys sure have comported themselves well with this Night People label, a veritable shit-storm of fascinating vibrations emanating from their every audio orifice. It’s sick. And yes, like every actually-good cassette I review, it’s probably fucking sold out before you even knew what hit you circa Dave Mustaine. Sorry; you lose.
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