Douglas McCarthy, the lead singer of Nitzer Ebb, has died. The band shared the news on social media without disclosing a cause of death. McCarthy was 58 years old.
Douglas John McCarthy was born in England in 1966. He founded Nitzer Ebb, in Essex, in 1982, with Vaughan “Bon” Harris and David Gooday. “We were school friends in Essex with a love of post-punk bands like Killing Joke, Theatre of Hate, Bauhaus, the Banshees, Cabaret Voltaire, Virgin Prunes, the Birthday Party, Abwarts, and Malaria,” McCarthy told Fact in 2009. “After going to see them, it seemed totally possible to do it our selves. We actually had a much more ‘Goth’ (that term didn’t exist back then) appearance and were influenced initially by the look of ‘The Bat Cave’ crowd.”
Nitzer Ebb, pioneers of the electronic body music (EBM) genre, released their debut single, “Isn’t It Funny How Your Body Works,” in 1985, via their own Power of Voice Communications label. A handful of tracks followed before they released their debut studio album, That Total Age, via Mute, in 1987. Writing about the album for Pitchfork, in 2019, Brandon Stosuy called it “a collection that distills their aesthetic to its synth-punk components.”
That Total Age turned out to be Nitzer Ebb’s only album with drummer Dave Gooday, who left the band in 1987 and did not return until 2019. Nitzer Ebb made their second album, 1989’s Belief, with drummer Julian Beeston and renowned producer Mark “Flood” Ellis. Three more albums followed before the band ended its original run in 1995.
Beyond Nitzer Ebb, McCarthy released music with Terence Fixmer as Fixmer/McCarthy. He also collaborated often with Depeche Mode’s Alan Wilder in Recoil. McCarthy’s lone solo studio album, Kill Your Friends, was released in the early 2010s.
