Mondo Bizarre Magazine: Einstürzende Neubauten, Casa da Música, Porto, 18.05.2022.

Einstürzende Neubauten © José Belém

words: Raquel Pinheiro: photos: José Belém

Some things are well worth waiting for. Einstürzende Neubauten are one of those. After a two years delay - for reasons sadly too well-known of all - the band is back on the road. Finally, presenting Alles in Allem their latest album, along with songs from other eras. The Year of the Rat tour became The Year of the Tiger tour and they do mighty roar.

Einstürzende Neubauten are a band both oiled, like an orchestra of wonders with standard and custom-build instruments that plays with perfect ease, as well as still infused by all the special creativeness and boldness that makes them unique.

From Alexander Hacker’s bass, that leads, punctuates, grooves, halts with mastery, to those purpose-build or repurposed instruments, like the supermarket cart, the bin, the pump, the many special percussion objects, rhythm, flow, melody spring from. Blixa Bargeld ’s voice stands clear, among all that. The singer’s Sprechgesang often, if not most times, adding to the cadence of the music.

In good spirits Blixa addresses the audience a few times, explaining song titles and the story or details behind those and the lyrics. He is particularly humorous when the metal bow that Alexander Hacker plays suffers a malfunction. Will it be possible to play the song (Ten Grand Goldie)? Will it not? While Blixa engages the audience, the engineers manage to solve the matter and the band re-starts the song.

From Wedding, the opening song, conducted by Alexander’s bass tones, to Susej, right before the Neubauten leave the stage, we are guided in a room-road-trip of sound and words landscapes from loving and warm to chilled and catastrophic. Sound intensity is expertly managed by Neubauten. They drive us to musical heights, just to leave us at the edge of the abyss, if not truly inside it, even if briefly, in a constant display of creativeness and how to keep an audience on its toes.

The sound crescendos are astonishing, the stops, the silences, silence really is sexy, and troubling and, like percussion, groove and tremble sounds, can run through our spine and leave us shaken, amazed, in love.

Alles in Allem was played in its entirety, its ten songs making for nearly half the concert with Grazer Damm being sung in English and Taschen and Tempelhof being left for the encore. When Neubauten left, after Susej, the end was not the end. It was just a pause, filled with a clapping standing audience, as they would return, not once, but twice.

The usage of different languages, offers another level of dynamics, inflections, textures. I recall, a good while ago, when interviewing Blixa, that, at the time, he was interested in how a person voice changes depending of spoken language. It is so, our voice does mutate depending of the language we’re speaking/singing in.

Aside from Alles in Allem songs there was Nagorby Karabach and the aforementioned Susej fom Alles wieder offen (2007); Die Befindlichkeit des Landes and Sonnenbarke from Silence is Sexy (2000) in which Alexander's bass shines deep; How Did I Die? from Lament (2014), Rampe from 2005-05-28: 25th Anniversary Tour and the ultimate finale with Redukt also from Silence is Sexy.

In the beginning there was rhythm could be applied to Einstürzende Neubauten. To many, they are still known, and seen, as a noisy, industrial, groveless band. However, rhythm was always there. Yes, sharper, much more crude and harsh early on, nevertheless, rhythm. Now, the ensemble – currently six on stage – is more polished, but don’t overtrust, you may still be blasted with some very acute frequencies and outbursts of frantic percussion, and rhythm, gentle, furious, mellow, vibrant, maniac, romantic, is everywhere. On those full, ever present bass lines, on the thousand percussion ways Neubauten use, on the voice and lyrics. It may even be present on the guitar. Of course, there is also melody. And melancholy. Rhythm, percussion, melody, melancholy were all perfectly expressed in the beautiful Redukt. A more poetic and emotional closing must be hard to find.

As for the blue in, it really should have been yellow, bold and blunt, Herr Blixa. Not only is yellow my favourite colour it would have looked amazing on the stage.

Willkommen zurück, meine Herren. Es war mir wieder eine Freude, Ihnen zuzuhören!