Customer Reviews

Haus der Lüge

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you plan to buy this album, please don't buy the version distributed by Thirsty Ear/Some Bizarre Records. The company has never paid the band for its recordings, and NONE of your purchase price will go to the creators of this exceptional music.

Another version is available through Indigo Records, and the group does get paid for those copies.

anything before tabula rasa the band hasn't seen a dime, go to mute or the band's website so they get paid for their art.

Some Bizarre does NOT pay royalties to Einstuerzende Neubauten. If you buy this album absolutely none of your money goes to the band. You may as well just download it - it's stealing from the artists either way.

Any EN album or DVD with "Some Bizarre" or "Cherry Red" or "Thirsty Ear" on it is a release that is not authorized by the band.

Some Bizarre are reissuing EN's albums because band authorized reissues, remastered and in digipaks, have been available for several years. Some Bizarre's old editions looked shabby next to the official ones, and they are now trying to catch up and fool you into buying their editions instead. They have even tried to sue EN out of the rights to publish their own music, but were not successful. Rightfully so!

If you get any enjoyment at all out of EN's music, please make the effort to buy albums that will benefit the band. Who should get your money - the people that actually made the music, or a record company who cheated them?

If you can see "Freibank", "Potomak", "Indigo", or "Mute" on an EN release, then this is authorized by the band.

Five stars for the album, 0 stars for this edition.

This album is awesome, and I think that most anyone interested in Einsturzende Neubauten will not be stopped in listening to it. Not that that is what makes it good. Nevertheless, this seems to be the first time when one immediately recognized the band's versitility. Every track is different from each other - every single one. It was also made during the period when they were breaking up and then kept getting back together. (Before '85 they were more of a posse or gang, to my knowledge) This music seems very fresh and spontaneous. I don't care too much for the extra tracks, but they make the cd more of an album length.
I have been playing this album for twelve years, and EN keeps growing. From this one I actually can't name a standout track because they're all so equally good. I remember not understanding the last one, Der Kuss, when I first heard it - it has a lot of piano and is quite paired down. But I soon found its restraint and beauty to be another great album closer (after To Be No Part of it, and before Headcleaner). The other classic monuments released by EN are (for early) Drawings of O.T., (and for later) Ende Neu and Silence is Sexy - but since it is one of the best bands for artistry, all of EN's recordings are excellent and worthwhile.
Haus Der Luge: recorded shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Buy direct from the band.

Me being one to give *VERY* few albums 5 stars, this is my personal favorite Neubauten album, and deffinitely on my top 10 list overall. It is *imperative* that you listen to the title track every day. The build up and energy of the song give me goosebumps every time I hear it and the climax chanting of "Gott hat sich erschossen / ein Dachgeschoss wird ausgebaut" has given me spontaneous orgasms...okay, so I guess it's not THAT good, but it's really great. The rest of the album is great too. Read somebody else's review, there's a lot of good ones here.

The first cd by this bandI listened to was 'Tabula Rasa'; I thought it was very interesting, but I didn't know if all cds by this band would catch up with it. Then 'Silence is Sexy' came out and I bought it... and I was just amazed at listening to one of the best musical works in history: that's my opinion, and even though my people think I exagerate, I still think it one of the best even if the band is not The Beatles. The problem: millions and millions of people who love music will unfortunately never give a chance to this band, or even know it: they lose, I think. Then I searched for the previous cds, and each one is amazing; it is a perfect example of how to follow a coherent evolution without stagnating; it would have been easy to stagnate for a band so unconventional; But 'Haus der Luege' is "just" another work of art by this German band. The typical Neubauten sound here comes closer to rock, and it is rock, maybe, but in Neubauten particular style.

Highlights? 'Haus der Luege' is wonderful and anticipates in a way 'Die interimsliebenden'; 'Feurio' is electro-dark, and good; Bargeld sings very interestingly. 'Ein stuhl in der Holle' gives me the creeps: it is beautiful, ok beer chanting, funny, but sensitive and clever lyrics. Indeed, the lyrics are very clever, with a lot of literary techniques; I wish I could understand it directly when listening to it, but anyway. If you don't know this band, 'Haus der Lüge' is, I think, one of the cds you could choose to begin with; maybe not the best, but quite representative. If you already know them, you can expect a cd similar to 'Tabula rasa',(the same way as 'Funf auf der...' may be related to 'Silence is Sexy') but as you know, no 2 Neubauten cds are the same.

This cd, for me,is one of the great highlights of Neubauten's career. It has a little of the slow, minimal, beautiful music you also find a lot of on 5 on the Open-Ended Richter Scale. It has some songs that are really funky in a quintissential Neubauten way. It has some great hard-hitting noise, especially in the incredible, intense, compelling title track. The first song is the most grating -- very deliberate, but also completely raw & primal. Genius. In the middle there's a very bare ambient section that moves almost imperceptibly from a drone to a drone with some flies buzzing through & out & though a little more to what feels to me like a muted riot & catastrophe. Then there's some of the funkyish stuff I already mentioned. At the end is a remix of the 2nd song & then an airy, but heavy, dark, anti=pop Dadaist thing N U Unruh did upon being asked to make pop music for a commercial.

I really think that this cd more than any other is essential to every Neubauten collection. It has so much of the range they've explored in their masterful career.

Some people think Halber Mensch was the start of Einsturzende genius, and although it may have been the album that got people to pay attention to them, Haus Der Luege has the greatest chaotic genius and prose than any previous album. Haus Der Luege was the beginning of the press deep critical interest, with philisophical reviews by Biba Kopf in 1989, of Bargeld's profound lyrics and it's sonic accompaniment. Get this on LP! YOu will not regret it!! It is amazing on vinyl! To this day, some of these songs are Blixa's favorite songs to perform.

With its wonderful depiction of equine micturation and Biba Kopf's insightful and poetic essay on the music-making practices of EN, this is perhaps my favourite EN album -a hard choice to make from so many greats, and one I have been listening to regularly for 19 years.

So, `House of Lies'? Well, we begin with `Prolog', a tersely spoken monologue interspersed with bursts of cacophonous noise made from scraping, falling and generally apocalyptic industrial detritus. Blixa Bargold (their singer, who also used to moonlight as guitarist for Nick Cave's Bad Seeds) intones in German `we could but...' and each time his answer is obliterated, as if any aspiring political manifesto-making is a waste of effort, doomed to failure. This then fades into `Feurio' a word with meanings of fire and fury, in which the case of Marinus Van Der Lubbe, a possible perpetrator of the Reichstag Fire, is reconsidered, set against a pulsing beat which breeds a sense of impatient intensity. Then, by way of counterpoint, we are treated to a `A Chair in Hell', a lilting European folk tune, driven along by handclaps and strumming. And then more insistent percussive structures emerge with the orchestral `House of Lies', taking us into grandiose territory as Blixa forcefully intones a choral epic which finally dissipates to the sounds of broken glass. Never before has the evocation of devastation sounded so beautiful.

`Epilog' ends this particular suite of related pieces, before the trilogy of Fiat Lux/Maifestpiele/Hirnlego begins with the sounds of buzzing bumblebees. We have been led into a world of tuneful ambience in which clocks begin to tick, bells chime, and modulated guitars strum, but then the soundscape shifts, and whilst the peaceful instrumentation persists, the sounds of crowds and sirens recorded at the fall of the Berlin Wall begin to rise up through the mix until the syncopated robot rhythms of `Brainlego' abruptly take over. Its tribal chant is infectious, and the basis of its percussive grounding remains curiously obscure.

By now you will have realised that you are listening to a symphony whose movements take you into uncharted sonic territories and evoke strangely pleasant feelings of fracture and anger. The percussive oddities continue with the whispered `Schwindel', reminding you that when Einsturzende Neubauten make music they rewrite the rules, inventing their own unique instruments. Finally we end with `The Kiss', which features an invention named `the noodle'- a wire hung between two poles which is tweaked to create a lush sound like a lover's heart fluttering.

My preceding words can only give a mere hint as to the atmospheric beauty, the pulsing rhythms, the poetry, and fascinating innovation contained within. This is a fully realised masterpiece, and one of my all-time favourite records, the virtues of which I feel compelled to proselytise. Don't be fooled into thinking Einsturzende Neubauten are just an 'industrial'band-they have little in common with either the genre's originators such as Throbbing Gristle, or any of the music from its subsequent goth, metal and electronic hybrid incarnations. Einsturzende remain a unique and wondrous proposition.

i had some problems with their previous work (which has its moments) but this was a gigantic leap forward on all levels. Both musically sonically and lyrically. It is actually very listenable hard indutrial experimental rock. I think it s their best because while not as experimental as previous stuff, it manages to be challenging and listenable at the same time.