Douglas McCarthy, founding vocalist with pioneering British industrial act Nitzer Ebb, whose danceable electronic sounds were the sonic path to countless goth, techno and alternative rock followers in the ‘80s and beyond, has died at the age of 58.
“It is with a heavy heart that we regret to inform that Douglas McCarthy passed away this morning of June 11th, 2025,” reads a statement from the act. “We ask everyone to please be respectful of Douglas, his wife, and family in this difficult time. We appreciate your understanding and will share more information soon.”
McCarthy passed Thursday, June 11th, according to reps for the band.
McCarthy, David Gooday and keyboardist Bon Harris formed the group back in 1982 in the clubbing hotbed of Essex, emerging alongside contemporaries Depeche Mode and a decade before the Prodigy.
“The clubs we knew were disco and funk,” McCarthy told The Guardian. “It’s in the DNA of the area.”
Meeting in high school aged 11 or 12, “there was a shared love of skateboarding, Devo, and new wave music,” Harris tells the Roland Corporation for a blog post. As music became more serious, their active involvement in skateboarding dipped. “At that point, it was the first wave post-punk synth stuff.”
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Early inspirations included Siouxsie and the Banshees, Killing Joke, and Bauhaus.
“Everyone was kind of perennially aware of Kraftwerk,” Harris added, “and you had the whole scene they helped to spawn, plus Depeche Mode, and the New Romantic thing. That wave of bands pushed the button for me. They made me realise I wanted to make music.”
Nitzer Ebb self-released Warsaw Ghetto, Warsaw Ghetto Remixes, and Let Your Body Learn and was later signed to Daniel Miller’s Mute, the UK indie label home to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Richie Hawtin/Plastikman and others.
McCarthy and co. made music for four decades, and toured throughout that time with an ingenious performance melding sequencers, percussion and voice.
The group charted six singles in the UK through the ‘80s and ‘90s, and several works impacted the Billboard Charts. Among them, 1987’s “Join in the Chant”, which came in at No. 164 in Rolling Stone’s list of 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time.
“Chant” was the “perfect techno crossover — particularly in Detroit, where techno artists like Carl Craig and Jeff Mills had once made industrial music,” RS enthused.
