The Cassandra Complex is a British electronic rock group originally formed by Rodney Orpheus, Paul Dillon, and Andy Booth in 1980 in Leeds, England. The current line-up still features Orpheus and Booth, with the addition of Hamburg musicians Volker Zacharias and Axel Ermes. Over the years, the band's sound has included elements of EBM, industrial, goth rock, new wave and synthpop, and the band's sound has been described as a blend of Joy Division, the Ramones and Kraftwerk. History The band was initially composed of Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party in Leeds. They began putting on large multimedia shows featuring various avant-garde acts from the Leeds area. Andy Booth was a journalist who interviewed the band and was later asked to join. The band released their first self-financed single, "March", in March 1985. A live cassette followed a month later, and the band signed to local label Rouska. Dillon left the band to get married and the band recruited Rodney's childhood friend John Marchini, with Jez Willis and Keith Langley guesting live and in the studio. They released two albums on the Rouska label, Grenade (1986) and Hello America (1987), and added tracks to the compilation's Raging Sun (1985) and Zarah Leander's Greatest Hits (1987). Afterwards they signed to the Belgian-based Play It Again Sam label, which issued the double-live album Feel the Width in 1987. During the production of the Theomania album in 1988, Marchini and Booth left, with Orpheus recruiting a new line-up for 1989's Satan, Bugs Bunny, and Me album. Hamburg guitarist Volker Zacharias from the band Girls Under Glass joined a year later, and has been a stable member of the group since then. During this period Orpheus also began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. Orpheus set up a recording studio in Hamburg where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps and Girls Under Glass. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery's 1996 overview of cyberculture Escape Velocity:To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic