HALBER MENSCH

On their third album (1985), produced in the legendary Berlin Hansa-Studios by the star producer Gareth Jones, the Einstürzende Neubauten present themselves focused strongly inward and concentrated on noise. Initially announced as “an album with love songs” and danceable in a bizarre way, “_ Mensch” portrays itself with introspective big-city souls that have been torn apart. It sets cultural as well as ideological counterpoints to government-regulated and media-enforced mass amnesia through its perfectly orchestrated scrap yard instrument sonatas and angry, dark, chemical drug-induced prose about the fall of man. Rhythmic anti-pop in the age of the Cold War, it advanced to a further, indispensable milestone of industrial music with songs such as “Yü-Gung,” “Z.N.S.,” “Der Tod ist ein Dandy” and “Letztes Biest (am Himmel).”

Thomas Clausen (BLVD-magazine.com)

WRITTEN & COMPOSED BY

Blixa Bargeld, Mark Chung, Alexander Hacke, FM Einheit, N.U. Unruh.