Einstürzende Neubauten – 1/2 Mensch (1985)

February 21, 2021

Possibly a hallmark of the industrial genre? Do I even need to prefix that sentence with “possibly”? I read online that someone called this a “random tapestry of sound”. That particular review wasn’t a good one, but the phrase stuck with me.

At first, 1/2 Mensch can no doubt seem random, but what this is is a carefully constructed monolith of industrial noise, encompassing all the atonal and rhythmic duality that comes with such a thing. Is it random sheets of percussive noise? Check. Is it danceable? Yes, I suppose it is.