 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2021) |
| Harmonizer | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 25 February 2002 | |||
| Length | 69:37 | |||
| Label | Metropolis | |||
| Apoptygma Berzerk chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Singles from Harmonizer | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
Harmonizer is the fourth studio album by Norwegian futurepop band Apoptygma Berzerk. It was released on 25 February 2002 on Metropolis Records and WEA International.
Harmonizer has been described by fellow bandmember Geir Bratland as Stephan's "most personal album".[ citation needed ] Many of the lyrics were heavily influenced by Stephan's divorce with his ex-wife Cathrine and the relationship with their daughter Iben.[ citation needed ] It was heavily criticized upon its release as Apoptygma Berzerk's "sellout" album,[ citation needed ] a title later given to Stephan's follow-up album, You and Me Against the World ,[ citation needed ] which saw an even more radical change in style, heading towards a 1980s rock influence.
Harmonizer did well on the German albums chart, reaching number 21; [2] the album's singles "Suffer in Silence" and "Until the End of the World" also charted in Germany. [3] The band managed to obtain a contract deal with Warner, a major label which previously formed a contract with Stephan's then-newly established label "Hard:Drive" after his departure from the band Tatra, which went bankrupt in 2005. Stephan even appeared on a mainstream Norwegian music show due to the popularity of the "Suffer in Silence" single.[ citation needed ]
The album was produced by Stephan Groth and his old friend Alon Cohen. Though Cohen has recently worked with mainstream rock and hip-hop artists and bands, he had done work in the EBM genre in the early 1990s under the moniker Defcon 4 and had lived in Norway for a brief amount of time. Alon was also thought to have been responsible for much of the album's distinctive sound, though Stephan still retained a high degree of artistic control.
Ted Skogmann decided to leave the band shortly after the album's release and though he appears on the album, playing guitar on the "Until the End of the World" track and on the "Suffer In Silence" single edit, he has not returned to the band since. For the tour and for Apop's third single "Unicorn", he was replaced by Angel, a former Kovenant guitarist who helped give the same aggressive attitude on stage.
Fredrik Brarud was also included into the band to play live drums which added another dimension to the music. He has stuck with the band since, along with Angel.
The Harmonizer tour took Apop all over the world, even into more dangerous zones such as Israel where they performed "Non-Stop Violence" to an ecstatic crowd of fans. A concert at The Grosse Freiheit in Hamburg, Germany was filmed and released on a DVD along with a documentary and all the videos from the album called The Harmonizer DVD which also included the Unicorn EP, which included a new video version of the track which was a stylistic change as it added drums and guitar on top of the original track. It also included a lot of remixes and two B-sides.
All tracks are written by Stephan Groth.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "More Serotonin... Please" | 1:29 |
| 2. | "Suffer in Silence" | 5:52 |
| 3. | "Unicorn" (Duet Version) | 4:11 |
| 4. | "Until the End of the World" | 5:52 |
| 5. | "Rollergirl" | 4:42 |
| 6. | "O.K. Amp – Let Me Out" | 9:50 |
| 7. | "Pikachu™" | 3:45 |
| 8. | "Spindizzy" | 5:09 |
| 9. | "Detroit Tickets" | 7:19 |
| 10. | "Photoshop® Sucks" | 1:58 |
| 11. | "Something I Should Know" (ends at 5:47; hidden tracks "Unicorn (reprise)", "Untitled 6" and "Spindizzy (reprise)" begin at 10:22) | 19:30 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 11. | "Something I Should Know" | 5:47 |
| 12. | "Unicorn (original version)" (ends at 4:12; hidden tracks "Unicorn (reprise)", "Untitled 6" and "Spindizzy (reprise)" begin at 9:10) | 18:24 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 12. | "Pikachu™" (Daydream Mix by Sonic Code) | 4:04 |
| 13. | "Until the End of the World" (Martin Eyerer Remix) | 6:12 |
| 14. | "Until the End of the World" (Schiller Remix) | 5:38 |
| 15. | "Untitled 5" | 7:13 |
| Chart (2002) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100) [2] | 21 |
Sarpsborg, historically Borg, is a city and municipality in Viken county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Sarpsborg.
Apoptygma Berzerk is a Norwegian musical group. They have achieved success with a brand of synth-pop, and ballads backed with electronic rhythms, commonly known within the scene and referring to themselves as "futurepop". Apoptygma Berzerk has over 30 releases and won awards and Top 10 spots in Germany and Scandinavia. Apoptygma Berzerk has toured Europe, North America, South America, Israel and Australia with bands such as VNV Nation, Beborn Beton, Icon of Coil and Unheilig.
Freezepop is an American electronic band from Boston, Massachusetts, United States, formed in 1999 by Liz Enthusiasm, Sean T. Drinkwater, and The Duke of Pannekoeken. Since December 2009, the current lineup includes Enthusiasm, Drinkwater, Robert John "Bananas" Foster, and Christmas Disco-Marie Sagan. The band is named after the frozen snack, and they have described their music as "sweet and cold and fruity and plastic-y".
Icon of Coil is a Norwegian electronic music band. The band was established as a solo project in 1997 by Andy LaPlegua who was joined by former Sector 9 bandmate Sebastian Komor to perform live. With the release of Shallow Nation, the band's first single, Komor joined full-time. In 2000, Christian Lund joined the live lineup. Later that year the band's first full-length album, Serenity is the Devil, was released, which climbed to number one on the Deutsche Alternative Charts. Shortly thereafter, Lund became a full-time band member.
Echo Image is a Norwegian synthpop band from Fredrikstad. The band started in the summer of 1997 when Pål Magnus Rybom and Jon-Ivar Berg started experimenting with electronic music. That summer the two of them recorded a demo. Berg left the group after they failed attract the attention of record labels and went to focus on his music project Biozide. Later that year Fredrik Hansen joined and Echo Image was officially formed with Trine Bilet joining towards the end of the year providing backing vocals, keyboards, and synthesizers.
A unicorn is a mythical and heraldic beast which looks like a horse with a horn between its eyes.
Stephan Groth is the man behind Apoptygma Berzerk, an electronic body music act that plays in styles such as synthpop and futurepop. Stephan Leonard Groth was born in Odense, Denmark but relocated with his family to his father's home town Sarpsborg, Norway in 1986.
7 is the second studio album from Norwegian futurepop group Apoptygma Berzerk. The album was released in 1996 following frontman Stephan Groth's work on several side projects. It has been remastered and re-released in 2003, 2008 and 2014 respectively. While each remaster included bonus songs, the samples of Carl Orff's "O Fortuna" present on "Love Never Dies – Part 1" were replaced with a choir keyboard patch playing an entirely different melody, due to copyright issues over the original pressings by Tatra and Metropolis Records.
Magenta is an industrial rock/alternative rock band from Norway formed by Vilde Lockert and Anders Odden during the summer of 1995. They released their first EP, Magenta in 1997. The song "Secret Sky" entered the charts in Norway and established their career.
You and Me Against the World is the fifth studio album from Norwegian electronic rock music band Apoptygma Berzerk. The album was released in 2005, and gave way to a very different sound in the band, whereas previous records had a more traditional electric synthpop/EBM sound, You and Me Against the World features a more mainstream, rock-oriented sound. It is the band's most successful album to date.
Bob Kraushaar is an English pop music record producer specializing in mixing. Kraushaar has mixed and produced commercially successful songs and albums for numerous British and international artists. His first industry appointment was as runner for Trevor Horn. He graduated to tape-operating at Marcus Studios but moved back to the SARM Studios when they expanded and equipped with SSLs. His first chart success came with Johnny Hates Jazz, and he was soon known as a mixing specialist having made his mark with ZTT artists such as Propaganda and Art of Noise. SARM's associated ZTT label was outputting multiple 12-inch singles requiring alternative versions, and many of these were mixed by Kraushaar. He went on to work with Paul McCartney, ABC, The Human League, Erasure, and perhaps his most regular client, Pet Shop Boys. 1985 saw Kraushaar mixing "Intermission ", a track on Anne Pigalle's album Everything Could Be So Perfect.
"Shine On" is a single by The House of Love, written by Guy Chadwick. It was originally released in 1987, when the band was on Creation Records, but failed to reach the UK top 100. The band's subsequent singles peaked outside of the top 40 until, in early 1990, "Shine On" was re-recorded, produced by Tim Palmer and re-released. This time the song peaked at #20 in the UK, #24 in Ireland, and #171 in Australia. Their follow-up single, "Beatles and the Stones", was their final single to reach the UK top 40.
Welcome to Earth is the third studio album by Norwegian futurepop band Apoptygma Berzerk. It was released on February 22, 2000 on Metropolis Records but was earlier released on Tatra Records.
Geir "Gerlioz" Bratland is a Norwegian keyboardist for the band Dimmu Borgir (2010-) and formerly was a member of the bands God Seed, Apoptygma Berzerk, The Kovenant, and Satyricon.
Sonic Diary is a two-disc compilation release from Apoptygma Berzerk. The first disc contains a collection of covers the band has recorded over the course of their career while the second disc is a collection of remixes, some of which were previously released and others which were new.
APBL98 is Apoptygma Berzerk's first live album containing live recordings from concerts all across Europe. It was mainly recorded with DAT-tape recorders borrowed from Stephan's father, Jan Groth and has been described by Stephan as a "commercial bootleg album" due to its quality.
Rocket Science is a studio album from Apoptygma Berzerk. It follows the same path of synth-rock trends as the band's last album You and Me Against the World. The first single was "Apollo " followed by "Green Queen". It was also their final album on Gun Records, released one week before the label ceased operating.
Groth is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Futurepop is an electronic music genre that has been characterized as a blend of synthpop, EBM and dance beats, based on trance and techno. It began to emerge in the late 1990s with artists like VNV Nation, Covenant, and Apoptygma Berzerk. Other leading genre artists were Assemblage 23, Icon of Coil, Neuroticfish, and Rotersand.
Norwegian group Apoptygma Berzerk have released eight studio albums, three live albums, five compilation albums, three DVDs, 13 EPs, and 20 singles.
