Back in the mid-80s, Irish musician Rodney Orpheus bumped into Paul Dillon in a Leeds nightclub while both were dancing to an early Die Krupps record. They decided to form a band that night, and did their first rehearsal the next day. A journalist called Andy Booth came to interview them and ended up staying to play guitar. They built a studio, made a single called March, and the career of The Cassandra Complex began.

From the beginning the band were fascinated by drum machines, synthesisers, and computerised rhythms, but unlike most other bands of the time, they also wanted distorted guitars over the top. And so industrial rock music was born… When the band released their second single, Moscow Idaho in 1985, it quickly soared to the top of the indie charts all over the world, got played to death on alternative radio stations, and influenced an entire generation of bands to come. They followed the success of Moscow Idaho with a trilogy of classic albums: Grenade, Hello America, and many fans’ all-time favorite, Theomania.

Rodney later moved to Hamburg and the band’s lineup changed. In came Juergen Jansen (later to join Project Pitchfork) who helped reinvent the band’s direction on the seminal concept album Cyberpunx; and Volker Zacharias, whom Rodney had met while producing his band Girls Under Glass. Volker soon became a lynchpin of the band’s sound on the band’s most romantic album The War Against Sleep, then the ultra-aggressive hard electro-rock that was Sex & Death, released in 1993, and the Wetware album, released in 2000.

A few years later original member Andy Booth rejoined the lineup, and with the addition of Axel Ermes on keyboards, the band started touring again, playing at festivals and clubs across Europe. In 2022 they released their latest studio album The Plague, which received rave reviews and reached #1 in the German Alternative Charts. They will be playing several shows throughout 2024.

Third House
Post punk greatness featuring David Barbarossa from Adam & The Ants/Bow Wow Wow