Einstürzende Neubauten (EN) were one of the fore runners of the industrial music age, formed in 1980 in Berlin as a part of Die Geniale Dilletanten, whose goal was to break down all musical conventions. Their founding members were Blixa Bargeld (ax man for the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), N.U. Unruh, Gudrun Gut and Beate Bartel, although two girls, Gudrun and Beate left the group shortly after. The band's experimentalist music, characterised by Unruh's rhythmic backbone experimenting with a variety of percussive effects, and Bargeld's discordant vocals and guitar, along with avant-garde and almost violent stage performances, often attracted heated debate in the press.
It does not seem unlikely a pairing then for Japanese director, Sogo Ishii, of such cult movie favourites as the samurai epic ‘Gojoe’ (2000), the cyberpunk mayhem of ‘Electric Dragon 80,000V’ (2001) and the trippy ‘Angel Dust’ (1994), to bring a bleak urban edge to the proceedings which must have had an impact, if not inspiration to Shinya Tsukamoto’s cyberpunk epic ‘Tetsuo: the Iron Man’. In 1986 '½ Mensch' was born.
Starting off with hulking rusting scraps of metal in grainy black and white and muted colour, bleeding oil, decaying in all their splendour. Grinders can be heard in the distance with loud thudding echoing around an old ruin of an abandoned ironworks. Throbbing synth and guitar add to the din. Grinders and percussion on steel pipes and cylinders start off slowly and increase in volume as we see the band, looking like a cross between
‘Mad Max’ extras and
‘Stomp’. Bargeld’s German vocals start, almost unintelligible, turns into shouting, howling and skin crawling shrieks. This is
‘Armenia’. Welcome to the early EN.
‘Sehnsucht’ plays over the start titles. Blinking televisions in the background, bricks are thrown and springs hit and the percussion is lightning fast, strumming guitar is accompanied by roaring chainsaw. Feedback static blows into a stellar explosion.
Creation and foetal shots replace the ironworks for (Last Beast). Which then grows into our introduction to the scrap and waste that are the musical instruments that the band uses, to the band themselves. Here the line up consists of Mark Chung, F M Einheit, N U Unruh, Alexander Hacke and the elfin-eared Bargeld.
Flaming effigies and hell-spawned music fill the ruins,
Rammstein would be proud. Wandering around, shopping trolleys, old ventilation ducting and sheeting of hulking metal get trashed, kicked, and pounded. This should be played
LOUD.
Things take a turn for the even more strange with the title track, ‘Halber Mensch’. Writhing worms, rot and decay, Einheit’s leg falls apart and mirrored images in black pools come alive, Halber Mensch is chanted throughout like some sort of black mass. Lythe dancers, roped and writhing like demented sumos, almost alien in nature. These all come from Ishii’s cannon of the weird and perverse. We are no longer in the live performance of the starting tracks, this world within the bleak ironworks has changed into a deranged Eastern performance art with subtitles so you, the viewer, can have your surreal finger snapping karaoke too.
Out of the works and on to the roadside, things finish off with ‘Schaben’, hardcore industrial noise in the shimmering black and white of the Tokyo day.
These show no sign of their 80’s age. Using live performance, mixed with video, and some concert footage (Die Zeichnungen des Patienten), this is a bit of a mixed bag. Despite different running times published, here we have 58 minutes worth.
Just a note for the curious, the shrieking, howling Bargeld was the voice behind the growling resurrected dead in Stephen Sommers blockbusting ‘The Mummy’ (1999). After watching this there is no wonder why.
There are no extras to boot, but a few short promos for other Cherry Red products and a full catalogue listing.
There seems to be some sort of on-line controversy with this release. The band themselves have strangely asked for a boycott of this. However, this is an official release by Stevo, a one time collaborator with EN, through his own Some Bizarre and Cherry Red Films, and until something better comes along, this, in all its grainy shrieking weirdness, is as much industrial hardcore as one could possibly wish for.
'Einsturzende Neubauten - 1/2 Mensch' is out to own now and available via
Amazon UK in the UK and available in the US via
Amazon.
For full track listing and more information on this release please check our
database.
Your Talkback on this Story