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Nitzer Ebb’s Douglas McCarthy Dead at 58

Nitzer Ebb frontman and Recoil vocalist Douglas McCarthy has died at age 58.

Douglas McCarthy, the vocalist who hectored anarchic invective with EBM innovators Nitzer Ebb and who joined Depeche Mode keyboardist Alan Wilder’s Recoil side project, died Wednesday at the age of 58. On “Join in the Chant,” a Number 9 dance hit in the U.S., he repeated the words lies, gold, guns, fire, church, and “muscle and hate” like a drill sergeant over bubbling synth and cold, robotic drum machines. “We worked exceptionally hard, and still do, on everything that has the Nitzer Ebb mark on it,” he told San Francisco Bay Area Concerts, “and even if there are missteps I think the purity of what we were or are trying to get is indicative of the time and place.”

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