ATR’s early releases – which included songs like “Hetzjagd Auf Nazis!”/“Hunt Down the Nazis!” – were surrounded by controversy in Germany. Highly political, they fused anarchist and anti-Nazi views with punk vocals and the emerging techno sound which was ravishing new back than at the beginning of the 90s. The three Berliners – Alec Empire, Hanin Elias and MC Carl Crack taken their name from a Portuguese Joe song Teenage Riot from the Teen-age Riot album with the word Atari added, as an Atari ST computer was used to create compositions.
They signing to Phonogram Records, a major European label, in 1993 the band received an unusually large financial advance which they duplicitously used to set up their own record label: Digital Hardcore Recordings (DHR) and in the best tradidion of any anarchist and punk band, they never delivered a commercially viable demo to Phonogram. Read more Atari Teenage Riot – Is This Hyperreal (2011)