Rating: No

Ende Neu

nothing

While this band, whose name translated means "collapsing new buildings," was busy tearing up stages, pounding holes in autobahn overpasses and playing their part in creating the percussive, impersonal, neu-tribal noise called industrial music, I was still in high school grooving on Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. Seems we both have changed. I don't listen to much Zeppelin these days, while  Einsturzende Neubauten has evolved into something that at times resembles post-new wave EZ-listening muzak. The CD's second track, Stella Maris, a duet between Blixa Bargeld and Meret Becker,  has all the lilt and grace of a Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack outtake. Hardly the type of music you'd expect from the outfit that demolished stages and generated crowd violence while opening for The Birthday Party in the early '80s. At times, Ende Neu almost sounds like a parody of what Americans think German post-modern music sounds like. The opener, Was Ist Ist, with its snide lyric recitation (like the rest of the CD, in German) over simplistic melody lines, promises to make anyone laugh out loud and ask, "what the hell is this?" Die Explosion Im Festspielhaus sounds just plain weird in a touch-my-monkey sort of way. Installation N1 has all the characteristics of something off The Fixx's Reach the Beach. It's not all droll scary noises. NNNAAAMM (which stands for New No New Age Advanced Ambient Motor Music Machine) is actually a funky, playful dance track that goes on for nearly 11 minutes chanting the track's title (in English, this time) while the band weaves in groovy bass, drum tracks and assorted noises. The title track, Ende Neu (translated: Ending New) pretty much sums up most of the disc, however, with its  stock noise tracks and flat soundscapes that all seem outdated in the face of today's more melodic -- and more danceable -- industrial sound. Perhaps Einsturzende Neubauten  paved the way for everything, from industrial to techno, but their pioneering efforts are lost on today's youth. And their attempts to modernize their sound only accentuate the shadow of a bygone era.

-- Tim McMahan

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Originally published in The Reader, feb. 25, 1999.

Copyright © 1999 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.