EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN – FUNF AUF DER NACH OBEN

2002 release. LP version. Printed inner sleeve. This is the fourth album by German avant-garde industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, originally released in 1987. The bonus track “Adler Kommt Spaeter” is an early version of “Zerstörte Zelle.” Considerably lower-key than all their previous releases, Fünf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala (trans. “Five On The Open-Ended Richter Scale”), with especially puzzling, almost country-rock track “Morning Dew,” sung in English, but with moments of whip-cracking and atomic explosions. There’s the same attention to rhythmic assault on this record as on the others, but there’s a quieter, more sinister, darker, lower-key ambience at work here, with Blixa Bargeld’s vocals right at the center-front of the mix, as he experiments with breath, lower pitches, whispers, and barely-audible squeals. There’s a barely-restrained, beautiful tension here that never gets resolved, sounding as if the band is holding itself back from complete annihilation.