Here is my copy of Nitzer Ebb’s That Total Age. You can see that like most of my tapes, it is pretty heavily damaged due to studio use. This is an obvious landmark album in the body music/industrial genre, but there is something weird about it. Why does the song, Warsaw Ghetto, appear on this tape? Perhaps the real question is why the song is not on the CD version of this album that I bought later with the strange title, Nitzer Ebb Produckt: That Total Age. I was shocked when I got the CD and found that the best, or at least most political, song on the album was missing. I couldn’t figure it out. Was it part of the Nazi Panic from the early ’90’s that was responsible for the attempted banning of Wolfenstein 3D in the United States? It seems to be a song about the Warsaw Ghetto, right? But, it takes the accusatory position blaming those who allowed it all to take place. Still, the song is missing from the CD version, and is even missing from the Wikipedia entry about the album. I have never been able to figure it out. Perhaps somebody out there knows the answer. I understand that the song in question appears on a few other singles, but the only thing I am looking to answer is why it is on this album only on the cassette.

I can’t say that I was ever really a fan of this band the way I was a fan of KMFDM, for example. I never saw them play, and I didn’t have every album that they recorded. I do recall that in the fall of my freshman year of high school, probably right after school started, there were two ultra-cute girls carrying on about the Nitzer Ebb show that they went to the previous night. As per custom, they were wearing the concert shirts to school the following day. They were ecstatic, and it was very intimidating. I was amazed that girls liked industrial music. I didn’t realize that Ebb was kind of a chick band at that time. It was a cool revealation to see that the stuff that I just recently discovered was not exclusive to skaters, bikers, and other dorks.

Submitted by:

Nick De Pirro