Quote from: Minus1 on February 20, 2026, 01:52:26 AMIn-Konflikt:
A bit more industrial sounding, this. But...er...sophisticated. That's it! GO is SI: Sophisticated Industrial. 😂
I think that's the truth of GO, as much as anything is (but will it make you free?). They are the heirs of SPK more than Whitehouse or Ramleh. An old-school industrial band,
not a power electronics one, albeit one that dabbles in power electronics and when they do, they usually do it very well ("Dogday," "Elders of Zion," "Viva La Guerre" among others). But that's not their main focus. I think a lot of the misconception that they get labeled as pe comes from how their reputation developed over the 90s before the mass adoption of the internet. And of course, I doubt the members of GO themselves would want themselves to be thought of as anything, and a lot of the ambiguity around them is deliberately created.
Years before I got more into experimental realms, the first mention of GO I ever saw was the infamous letter to the editor in
Industrial Nation magazine that called them and Con-Dom "Nazis." (an entirely original allegation). This was the same letter, btw, referenced in Con-Dom's interview in Freak Animal #11. (Incidentally, for those that were into EBM/electro-industrial and came from that scene before noise like I did, I remember the author of said letter said he was :Wumpscut:, so I guess it was Rudy Ratzinger???)
As these things do, all that really did is pique my interest as to what the fuss was about, so their name stayed in the back of my mind until I started buying noise. I saw more mentions of them in magazines like
Audio Drudge praising GO releases highly. This was the end of the 90s so, while the internet was there, it was still even years away from file sharing/torrenting. Unless you had access to some kind of tape trading network, which I certainly didn't, you weren't going to be able to hear any GO in advance. So with all that, and seeing GO releases going for (at the time) seemingly insane amounts on Ebay, they began to take on an almost mystical quality. Plus, they were always grouped under pe. So I thought they were pe. I had nothing else to go on. I also thought they must be the most insane music ever put to wax. I had already begun to place expectations on them that were going to be nigh impossible to meet.
I have a feeling that conception was like that for a lot of people in the 90s finding their way to this stuff. GO was pe, and they had to be the best at it, because their releases were rarer and more precious than gold.
1999 comes along and Malignant mail order gets
The Truth Will Make You Free in. Finally, I'm getting my chance to hear GO in all its glory. I get the package, eagerly unwrap it, queue my player, place the needle down, and sit down in front of the speakers. I think I seriously expected to be staring at the back of a bloody hole in my skull from the wall behind me because the sheer aggressive power of GO had blown my eyes and brains out!
Of course, if you've listened to
The Truth..., that is...not exactly what its about. Especially since the group was going through a bit of a shift at the time with Roland Freisler on the way out. But again, there was no way to know that context at the time.
When it was over, I was....puzzled, more than anything (and my brains were certainly
NOT splattered all over the walls). I didn't dislike it exactly, but I was wondering what the hell the hype was about. Where was this maniacal power electronics hellscape that was going to pummel me into quivering bits of meat? "Harmony" was pretty good, though.
Interestingly, that came with the CD reissue of
Leichenlinie, and
that I did like a lot more, although still not a level that I could quite understand GO's reputation. I didn't throw anything out or sell it, though.
The 2000s came on, file sharing blossomed, and between that, and some Ebay haunting (and a wallet fatter from leaving behind the college years), I did end up getting to hear all of GO's discography to that point. I also was a little older and wiser and more able to appreciate music that was a little more than just aggression. And I noticed something. The mature atmospherics of
The Truth... were actually not that unusual. All of GO's releases had that. Even
Remember, with some of the most aggressive work of their discography, had a ton of atmospheric moments. This was really the majority of their sound, not the pe tracks. And I found myself liking it more and more, and thinking of them less and less as a pe band. I was perfectly primed for
In Konflikt by the time it came out.
Anyway, yeah, I realize this turned into maybe some long-winded navel-gazing reminiscence, but if you'll forgive that, the point is
In Konflikt is a great industrial album precisely because it represents GO at the height of their craftmanship of these kind of atmospherics. I doubt you'll find it #1 on many lists of "What is the Best GO," because its their least aggressive, but its mine (and #2 for me now is that same
The Truth... that I didn't get at first). There's such a wealth of sounds and moods in its palette. And there's still a few caustic moments even so. The ending of "Industrial Strife Pt. 1" might be my favorite 2-3 minutes of sound ever. If someone asked what industrial music is in its original form,
THAT is what I would play them.
