Originally first published in 1983, this second work consistently continues the direction that the Einstürzende Neubauten had pursued with their debut release “Kollaps” two years before. Cathartic noise cascades and finely-dosed, eruptive noise outbreaks of feverish destruction fantasies are beat from the collective soul by a noise community that proliferated into a permanent ensemble consisting of Blixa Bargeld, F.M. Einheit, N.U. Unruh, Marc Chung and Alexander Hacke. While “Dynasty” was starting to be aired on German television and Kajagoogoo obstinately held the top of the charts with “Too Shy,” the Berlin noise anarchists delivered quite a personal soundtrack about the fall of man and a milestone in the industrial genre that includes songs like “Vanadium-I-Ching,” “Hospitalistische Kinder/Engel der Vernichtung,” “Abfackeln!” and “Armenia”!
Do you hear the din of the beating hearts?
Do you see the vultures over the fire?
The roof has been in flames for so long
do you see the hyenas on the street?
Beloved
beloved
do you see the vultures over the fire?
Your soul is inflamed
beloved
come closer beloved
speak to me in epidemic language
do you see the vultures over the fire?
Scavengers have patience
do you see the cadavers dancing?
Beloved
beloved
come closer beloved, I infect you
do you see the cadavers dancing?
come closer beloved, I infect you
come closer beloved
beloved
do you see the cadavers dancing?
Do you see the vultures over the fire?
Yes – why?… Forensic traces… Yes… what’s that supposed to be?… Come on… you pick up everything you see… good… right… maybe it was the monster which… yes, maybe… but maybe not…
Next, please.
No more inhibitions before the deluge
so what – nail it then!
Hear ye people, let it be said:
as quarry an angel we have slain
I have buried my brain
like my soul in desert terrain
… and I no longer want to wait
until God’s infinite scrotum
finally goes up in flames
Exterminating angel
Exterminating angel
Exterminating angel
Exterminating angel
locked inside dormitory dreams
praying to the new angel
which still my angel remains
like a shadow floating over me
aroused by the sound of weaponry
my angel and I shall abolish the deity
… and I no longer want to wait
until God’s infinite scrotum
finally goes up in flames
exterminating angel
Exterminating angel
Exterminating angel
Exterminating angel
Let us free our souls of mould
…free them of fungal growth
drain into carrion
drain into
carrion
Let us free our souls of mould
…and when the town is burning…
yes… those are our torches…
Let us torch our souls
let us torch our souls
let us torch
our souls
Actually
I had
nine arms
desiccated
in the sunshine
actually
were legs
like tentacles
stunted
in the daylight
actually
I want
to go out into the night
want my
tendrils
back
back
As safe as fake money (better printed)
burned up with love
burned up with love
for eternity
i.e.
have taken love
– to ignite –
as safe as fake money
burned up with love
and lead
and lead
and lead
as safe as fake money
burned up with love
Shine, lead!
Lead, lead and lead burns up love
Burning to know
one question only:
Are the volcanoes still active? Are the volcanoes still active?
Please don’t disappoint me!
I believe again in voodoo.
Stick needles in the phone book. Are the volcanoes still active?
I know you won’t disappoint me
It’ll all be muzak
they’ll all be the same
what time could it be?
Power is a non-stop tape
and my ears are wounds.
It’s so flat here.
Muzak for morgues and new buildings
pleasantly humming
leaving no traces
chord scars
in my face.
It’s so flat here.
What time could it be?
Listen to your master’s voice.
Even lackeys have a sense of timing.
What time could it be?
It’ll all be muzak
they’re all the same.
power is a non-stop tape.
It’ll all be muzak
and they’re all the same.
What time could it be?
All the world’s studios
all at the same time
switch off.
What time could it be?
It’s so flat here.
Between 33 and 45
or in a 2-hour rhythm
It’s a question of volume
and they’re all the same, the same.
We had a garden… And I had been working all day long… A woman asked: how long have the termites been up there in the trees?… and before that someone else said: those aren’t termites… And when I looked up there were things like the houses which termites live in… Allegedly… It’s not true… I suddenly realize that there are little black bugs stuck everywhere, all over my hands and wrists… and that my hands are all resinous from the trees, brown, encrusted… I try to flick them off, to tear them off… of course that doesn’t work because my hands are completely sticky… I take a knife and try to scrape them off… In doing so I cut the index finger of my left hand, the middle joint…It was as if the cut was a slice, a flap of skin… loosely hanging there… I was afraid that the wound could become infected… I wanted to go indoors, wanted to wash it under running water… Inside I then had to thoroughly scratch off the insects under the running tap… After a while the water in the sink was just a turgid brown goo resembling vomit… All the dead insects, all that dissolved resin… the blood from my fingers… The sink gets fuller and fuller because less and less water is running away… I pick out everything clogging up the plughole… Everything that has somehow come out of my body… The way one removes things when one wants to unblock the sink…by pinching everything between one’s fingers… and the stuff I’m holding in my hands is like spaghetti, remnants of food, like resistors… sort of yellow and red and green… repeated at intervals… with stripes of other colours… like electrical components… voltage regulators, diodes and the like. I am thinking:
I know what that is… those are my DNA molecules…
I have decided to dry them out… laid out on the table to dry they have assumed the shapes of ladders… little plastic ladders… I have laid them out, and they could all be inserted into one another… blue yellow plastic ladders… my DNA… I wonder whether someone might not like to have them… And Mark is the first one to lay eyes on these coloured ladders… The first thing he asks is, how do you actually listen to it? I reply: that’s not something to listen to, it’s my DNA… Deoxyribonucleic acid…
There was a record shop located in the booth of a multi-storey carpark:…
A madman turns up who is bent on buying them. But we still haven’t worked out the packaging.
How do you actually listen to it?