There was a time when Blixa Bargeld and his band were the spree killers rampaging through malls on busy Saturdays, all searing anger, deafening noise and violent flash. The visceral power of their first decade of work is undeniable-- they had christened themselves Einstürzende Neubauten (German for "collapsing new buildings") and they made music to match the moniker, employing scrap metal and dental equipment to give it the necessary sturm-und-drang. After releasing a series of lackluster albums in 1990s which lost the immediacy of their prime work, the band made an impressive rebound with 2000's Silence Is Sexy, and they've all but perfected the more restrained approach begun on that album with Perpetuum Mobile: Where once they embodied bursts of malevolent violence, they're now something more akin to a different kind of murderer: the long-term, reclusive serial killer, whose neighbors find to be the quietest, most polite person on the block, but who has secretly buried 48 bodies in the woods behind his house.
On the whole, this is the quietest Neubauten album to date, frequently lowering to a mere whisper, but don't let this fool you-- no album this band has made in the past has bristled with so much latent violence or been haunted by a more palpable sense of unseen menace. Bargeld sounds unbelievably relaxed and calm, drifting amid music that violates your sense of what is harmonically and rhythmically decent, and the two main culprits of this are the percussion and programming. The album is precisely rhythmic, but mixed into the fairly straight rhythms are noises that scrape and warble, pitches that hide in unpleasant frequencies, and of course, Bargeld's measured German sing-speak.
All of these elements combine to create such a seamless mix of the mundane and the sinister that it can't help but raise the hairs on your neck. This approach is used to devastating effect on "Selbstportrait mit Kater", the verses lurching along on a repeated bass note and scattered percussion as Bargeld delivers his lyrics on what sounds like the verge of anger. Instead of exploding, though, he simply allows the music to do it for him, in the form of some nasty, metallic slamming noises that rhythmically frame the subtly delivered vocal hook.
The sprawling, 14-minute title track is incredible, clinging to a minimal electronic beat as the music mutates from quietly melodic passages to outbursts of metal percussion and into a terrifying verse backed primarily by the high-pitched vocal screech tones that Bargeld seems uniquely able to perform. The movement between extremes is kept unpredictable-- segments vary in length and intensity for maximum nerve-racking effect. Unfortunately, Perpetuum Mobile doesn't maintain this sinister tone for its entirety; the polite electropop of "Youme & Meyou" is especially lightweight, and sounds desperately out of place, too consonant to effectively meld with anything else here. Still, for the most part, this is a strikingly effective album, one whose dread and foreboding stick like residue after it comes to a halt in the player. These guys may not have the non-stop intensity they once did, but they've replaced it with a tension that's just as effective.
