Logo #127: Apoptygma Berzerk

More Norwegians, this time those of the up-tempo electro variety - this "crop circle" symbol, designed by Christian Bloom, Halvor Bodin and band founder/lead singer Stephan Groth in 1999, first appeared on the cover of the Apoptygma Berzerk album "Welcome to Earth" in 2000. "Shine On" is really a rather good track, with its references to Placebo, Nam June Paik and one of Iggy Pop's better songs, "The Endless Sea," as is their utterly brilliant cover of Kim Wilde's "Cambodia," which fits really well on a mixtape between New Order's "Love Vigilantes" and Paul Hardcastle's uplifting hit "19" (not to be confused with the single about Edgar Allan Poe's wife, "13").

Logo #81: Ah Cama-Sotz

Belgian noisemaker Herman Klapholz is really into bats and cats. This logo, for his band Ah Cama-Sotz, was realized by Laurent Pietsch in 1994. This video for "Hungrr-ah" is sort of like that "Star Trek" episode where the guy with the half-white body is chasing the guy with the half-black body. Or vice-versa. Except this isn't outer space and "Star Trek" didn't have women strolling the cemeteries with froofy umbrellas. Whenever I hear the word "Sotz" I always think of the 1962 film "Zotz," which starred good ol' Tom Poston as the bookish professor who can slow down time, cause pain or kill just by pointing at someone and saying the word "Zotz!" Poston later played George the Handyman on "Newhart." God bless you, Tom Poston.

Logo #60: Nitzer Ebb

From Simon Granger, designer of the until-now apocryphal crest and sheaves: "The logo was originally drawn manually by myself using Corel Draw in late 1994. The NE initials were initially created using straight forward rectangles then welded together in Corel and 'node edited' to create the circular effect. The lower case type underneath was a font supplied with Corel called Serpentine and is the closest I have got to using a font with serifs (apart from two Barry Adamson sleeves). The Olympic-style leaf element was traced in Corel from a photo of a badge I found on the web, and then flipped and duplicated to form the two crossing over. The initial idea came from Bon (Harris, Nitzer Ebb shouter and percussionist), as he had an idea of using a design that had a look and feel of an classic car type badge. The final overall effect still radiates the typical muscular / military / minimal NE aesthetic but in a more of an emblem rather than just typography. The design was only ever officially used on the inside sleeve of the "Big Hit" album in a small version and a knocked back watermark image behind the lyric sheet - however, I think it is in use on various t-shirts and around the web."

Nitzer Ebb were a British band of pioneers - in the early '80s, along with Front 242, D.A.F. and Stomach Basher - of EBM, the so-called "electronic body music" made up of a relentlessly syncopated series of shouts that affected everything from Parisian haute couture to homely girls in the American heartland looking vaguely interesting because of all the chintzy vinyl, tall stompy boots and pierced-lip sullenness. Apart from that, Nitzer Ebb had a few really compelling pop singles that are great to exercise to and still stand on legs of nostalgia and awkward embarrassment that only a pre-Internet world can still keep hidden.