Einstürzende Neubauten
Halber Mensch

THE REVIEW

The project Einstürzende Neubauten ("collapsing new buildings") was born in Berlin in 1980, spearheaded by Blixa Bargeld, best known as a guitarist for Nick Cave's Bad Seeds (from which he recently departed), and Halber Mensch is their third album, released in 1985. It is considered by many to be the pinnacle of their early expressive phase, characterized by purely chaotic and noise-based exploration.
It begins with the eponymous song (?), a true obsessive litany from the underworld, cold choral chants and nothing else, satanic echoes and reverberations everywhere: spine-chilling. A more disorienting introduction could not exist, yet, it's enough to move to the following tracks to realize that rhythms reign supreme: Z.N.S. but especially Yu-Gung, the gem of the album, are general rehearsals for the transition from the Post-Punk of Killing Joke to proto-Industrial rhythms that would later be developed by bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails: the percussion takes the lead, electronics become increasingly intrusive, and Bargeld meanwhile spits his neurosis at us; the ending of Yu-Gung is beautiful, with its invasion of synthetic pulses; following is Trinklied, with its slow and somber progression, almost resembling a Nazi march; or again the splendid Seele Brennt and Sensucht, alternating between sweet and deceptive whispers and blood-curdling screams; closing with pure noise in a No-Wave style that serves as the backdrop to the nightmare of Der Tod ist ein Dandy, and the genuine songs, placed at the end perhaps as a symbol of a discovery, a possible symbiosis between melody and noise: Letzes Biest and Sand.