I’ve had the latest Einstürzende Neubauten album for a while now and I’ve been meaning to review it because I know how much you’ve been dying to hear my thoughts on their latest opus.

Perpetuum Mobile is a comparatively quiet album for Neubauten and this shows in the distinct lack of heavy machinery that they are renowned for using in he percussion section. At first listen you could be mistaken in thinking that they had simply relied on conventional instruments for this album but a quick glance down the instrument list shows that they still favour the use of air compressors, plastic pipes car tires and survival blanket (sic). Fortunately, none of the poetry is missing and Blixa Bargeld and his crew show that after 20 plus years of making truly industrial music, they can find a heart and soul in their music that other, more ephemeral, crowd pleasing and chart topping bands seem incapable of drawing out.

The album starts off with a typically ironic first track, simply titled “Ich gehe jetzt” (”I’m going now”). This seems to strike the chord for what, on the surface, appears to be the theme for the album, namely the transient nature of twenty-first century living. The title track, “Perpetuum Mobile”, is a 13 minute ode to intercontinental travel and reminds me of that thousand yard stare you get when you gazing out of the window of a bus, train or plane. But digging a little deeper unearths the existential element of the tracks and the overall tone is very introvert and reflective if not a little melancholy and isoalted. It’s a definitely a different feel to the post coital eulogy of their last album, “Silence is Sexy”.

As with most of their albums, the lyrics are predominantly in German but the inlay provides the English translation. While I’m sure it sounds better in the original tongue, they still possess the ability to provoke wonderful imagery, as a line in the eighth track “Paradiesseits” (”Paradisng”) shows:

In my dreams the birds advise me
Of songs I can later sing

Then you come across the opening verse of “Selbsportrait mit Kater” (”Self portrait with hangover”) which describes the type of morning I know only too well:

It’s often in the morning
my hands are shaking
my face
it doesn’t belong to me
Water! - comes as a shock to me
I can’t take it quietly

I wasn’t sure about this album on first hearing it but it has definitely grown on me. They’re playing in Kentish Town on Saturday and you’ll find me there, no doubt moshing to the song from which this site takes its name and generally having a fantastic time. But then you’ll get to hear all about that next week.

SHAMELESS CAPITALIST UPDATE: Buy Perpetuum Mobile + Limited Dvd from Amazon.