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British techno-rock bands tend to be a Jekyll and Hyde bunch that can be found vacillating between darkly ironic languor and chirpy, pepped-up pop.
Wednesday night at Club Postnuclear in Laguna Beach, Nitzer Ebb's version of British techno-rock couldn't have been further from that (Depeche) mode. The trio with the nonsense name played "industrial" dance music that was bluntly emphatic rather than ironic. As for chirpy pop-well, Nitzer Ebb (the "i" is pronounced long, as in `night') sounded about as chirpy and pop-ish as a drill press.
A more appropriate British literary reference here would be H.G. Wells' futuristic science-fiction novel "The Time Machine." Its villains are a horrific race of industrial gnomes known as the Morlocks, who dwell underground, operating sinister machinery and cannibalizing...