Customer Reviews

Unbehagen

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Very talented and unconvential singer. Her oral excellence and creativity is only one ingredient in this explosive cocktail; the music is as creative and well executed, the words are great too. Wow! Such a talented bunch of musicians! One of my all time favorite albums!

An excellent opportunity to get Nina Hagen's first two albums together in one set. Musically challenging, extremely offbeat and just downright weird, Nina Hagen has been setting stages and recording studios on fire for about 25 years now... hard to believe.

With tracks like "Alptraum", "Hermann Hiess Er" and "Auf'm Friedhof", Nina is definitely more palatable to those who understand German, however an understanding of the lyrics is hardly necessary to appreciate the music she and her band crafted in the late 70's and early 80's.

As a rule, I tend to prefer the earlier efforts of musicians, and Nina is no exception. Outside of "Nunsexmonkrock", which is much more polished, this double album set is her best work to date. Much more hard hitting than her later, more dance oriented works. The cover of The Tubes classic "White Punks on Dope" ("TV Glotzer" when Nina does it) is better than the original, in my opinion.

Nina Hagen remains one of the most unique characters in the history of rock and roll. These albums prove why.

Wow, this is one great album by the German rock diva, perhaps her best. It is more accessible than the debut, offers greater variety and some truly gripping songs. African Reggae is a powerful tour de force and by the way, a dancefloor classic, Wir Leben Immer Noch (Lene Lovich's Lucky Number) is a perfect pop song, and Wenn ich ein Junge war with its humorous lyrics just about bursts with exuberance. Fall In Love Mit Mir is another catchy number, but every track has its own charm. The great melodies and intelligent lyrics with enthusiastic playing by her band ensure the classic status of this album. In my opinion, this is her Opus Magnum. It demonstrates what can be achieved by integrating reggae rhythms into a rock format, while the rock songs remain top of the league. Her vocal gymnastics are less in evident than on the debut album, but her voice is still brilliantly utilised. An excellent, timeless classic!

I thought this was some of the coolest music around when it came out. Sounding like a disturbed Rheinmaiden on acid (or a crazy witch, as an African-American friend once called her when he told me to: "Turn off that f****** crazy-a** witch!"); Nina manages to do to us what Mr. Burns only pretended was done to him: make us scared of the Germans. And somehow, in this exhilarating music, that's a good thing. It may even be that what we're really scared of is enjoying the songs because they might be politically incorrect.

The music accompanying Nina is not always raw (we can only imagine the full-on effect of a band like the Pixies backing her); but even the well-produced, Rocky Horror Picture Show-sounding songs work for me. People can argue that Nina's a poseur, but she demonstrates here that campy humor was the only thing saving punk from unbearable self-importance.

If Rupert Everett became convinced that Sharon Stone was a little crazy when she expounded her acting-as-possession theory, what would he make of Nina after hearing the orgiastic "Wer Leden Immer...Noch": a song where devils and angels are not only channeled, but also appear to be phoning and shooting at each other? Listening to these records I can imagine Nina leaping all around the studio like an angry little monkey. Is this anger that of a revenant spirit bemoaning the lost decadence of Weimar Berlin? I prefer to thing she's angry with the future knowledge that these performances would never receive anything like the recognition Sharon Stone did for her turn in Casino.

Less artsy than their weirder,more eclectic debut album,this is an excellent sophomore effort by the diva?s band.More rock`n roll oriented in general and with Nina emphasazing the upper portion of her operatic vocal range this time (shrikier),with voice effects that make her voice cut your tympanae.It opens with an excellent reggae,and from that point the songs are frantic,fast paced punk `n roll affairs,with an incredibly lenghty and heavy solo in the middle of ?Fallin In Love Mit Mier? that has to be heard to be believed.The albums closes at a bare 38?with an instrumental rendition of ?My Way ?so deformed and sped up you would?nt tell it?s based on the original (and maybe it?s not !).One of the songs is a filler taken from some live recording you?ll be skipping after the first 30?but nothing?s wrong considering how good and anthologic this album is.The sound is very good despite a certain lack of upper treble (especially noticeable on the cymbals.

Wow, this is one great album by the German rock diva, perhaps her best. It is more accessible than the debut, offers greater variety and some truly gripping songs. African Reggae is a powerful tour de force and by the way, a dancefloor classic, Wir Leben Immer Noch (Lene Lovich's Lucky Number) is a perfect pop song, and Wenn ich ein Junge war with its somewhat risque lyrics just about bursts with exuberance. Fall In Love mit Mir is another catchy number, but every track has its own charm. The great melodies and intelligent lyrics with enthusiastic playing by her band ensure the classic status of this album. In my opinion, this is her Opus Magnum. It demonstrates what can be achieved by integrating reggae rhythms into a rock format, while the rock songs remain top of the league. Her vocal gymnastics are less in evident than on the debut album, but her voice is still brilliantly utilised. An excellent, timeless classic!

This is the seckond album by Nina Hagen.
Highlights on this album is African Reggae I love the way she screams on this song, Alptraum, Wir Leben Immer...Noch ( Lucky Number ). This album is very good but it's weird.
If you like Nina you should also try Nunsexmonkrock is maybe her best, and her new album Return Of The Mother and at least Street.

The songs are sung mostly in German (translations easily found via the web). Very listenable music that sounds (at times) punk-ish, rock-ish, pop-ish, etc. In other words, Nina was already ignoring all the rules. Not quite as good as her next two albums, but still very wonderful . . . if you like Nina Hagen to start with, since she is surely an acquired taste.

Length:: 0:51 Mins

Oh, holy smoke, is this good! The Nina Hagen Band ruled my life in high school at the beginning of the 80's -- and I wasn't even a punk. I just recognized a masterpiece when I heard it.

Thing is, I'm in the process of liquidating a 700+ piece record collection, one that's full of music I love - Steely Dan, Steven Reich, Phillip Glass, Depeche Mode, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Laurie Anderson...I could go on and on. But I discovered after a few recent listens that I no longer care to listen to most of it. My tastes have developed far more sophisticated processors, and popular music has come a long way in the last fifteen years, to say nothing of the last thirty.

There's nothing in my vinyl collection as sophisticated as Radiohead, for instance. Or as knowing as The Eels. Nothing with the textures of the Junior Boys, the creepy depths of Aphex Twin, or the wisdom of the Love & Theft era Dylan. Indeed there's precious little in that whole wonderful collection of vinyl I care if I ever hear again.

The Nina Hagen Band is one of the few, perhaps the only album from my early years I still listen to really loud even now, close to thirty years after it first hit my consciousness. This is a dense, muscular punk album with an art-punk aesthetic, anchored by Hagen's incredible vocal range and power. She was an opera prodigy from the time she was 9 or 10, and you can really tell here. And her backup band is amazing, too, with a monster drummer who holds every piece of it together by sheer force of will.

I purchased The Nina Hagen Band and Hagen's later oddball masterpiece Nunsexmonkrock online as downloads from a Russian music site for only $2 each. The Russian site was the authorized seller, linked directly from Hagen's official site. This was about 2003, and it shows that Hagen was way ahead of the curve in understanding the sweet spot price point for digital music.

Major hero, and a huge influence on every female punk who followed her, whether they knew it or not. It's amazing how contemporary The Nina Hagen band feels today.