:WUMPSCUT:

Another in the line of '90s goths who forsook guitars for the sampler and synthesizer, Rudy Ratzinger's :wumpscut: project was born in 1991 when Ratzinger released his first cassette-only albums, Defcon and Small Chambermusicians. Vuz Records signed the German to their fold by the following year, and after a release on a 1993 Vuz compilation (New Forms of Entertainment), the first :wumpscut: album, Music for a Slaughtering Tribe, appeared in December 1993. After the release of the Dried Blood EP on Ant-Zen Records in 1994, Ratzinger formed his own Beton Kopf Media label by 1995 and released both another EP and a full-length that year (Gomorrha and Bunkertor 7, respectively). After the appearance of :wumpscut: on the US compilation The Remix Wars -- alongside Haujobb -- the Metropolis label signed Ratzinger to an American deal and re-released the entirety of his work, followed by the new full-length Embryodead. Born Again followed in 1998, and two years later :wumpscut: returned with Bloodchild. The aggro-industrial tinged Wreath of Barbs illustrated Ratzinger's fondness for dance music's past and present when it was issued in fall 2001. ~ John Bush