Halber Mensch Einstürzende Neubauten Sohgo Ishii, Dir. Music Video Distributors DVD (2005) Price: $24.95 Available at Amazon

At any rate, since the band probably doesn't have the time or the resources necessary to ship out hundreds of promo copies of their version of Halber Mensch, this review can serve both parties' interests.

I'm the Splendid reviewer who, when an artist uses the word "industrial" in his press release, takes it a bit more personally and seriously than the rest. I'm as hard core as any leather pants-clad teen, but I distanced myself from the scene for years, only to return and find uninvited people pissing in the water reserved for VIPs of the clan. There's little standing room around that pool, and even less when the members of Einstürzende Neubauten roll up. To me, nothing embodies the genre more than this pack of self-described "non-musicians", lunatics who started a band with instruments they crafted from junk and piles of trash they found on the streets of Communist Berlin, supplementing their methods with industrial power tools they must have nicked from a construction site.

After watching Halber Mensch a few times, jaw dropped and unblinking eyes fixed on the screen, I can say that my resolve to stamp out mediocre clones just jumped from firm to incendiary.

Working in tandem with the 1986 audio release of the same name, Halber Mensch is a film about Einstürzende Neubauten, it's a slice of their lives from the days before the Berlin Wall fell. The film doesn't use interviews, boring anecdotes, or substantial fictional side-notes to add drama -- the shot of FM Einheit sporting an uncomfortably dopey look on his face, seemingly lost in contemplation as the camera cuts from him to the grandeur and desolation of the band's performance space, makes sense later, trust me. The film takes only three minutes away from the album's momentum to introduce each member, verbally silent though speaking a great deal of invisible content: Mark Chung shears his locks, then shaves his head; FM Einheit hand-sews his tattered high-top while standing on a pier; N.U (sic) Unruh rhythmically smacks two pipes together as he descends from above, upside down, feet bound; vampiric Blixa Bargeld sleeps in a field using a rock as a pillow. The oddest of these is a clip of Alexander Hacke, who barely contains a smirk as he walks along the beach with his morning's catch -- a desiccated cat hanging by its collar on the end of a stick, its raised paws offering frozen defense.

In a mélange of Eastern and Western minimalism, director Sohgo Ishii lets EN explain themselves in the way they do best: through their music -- and more specifically, the performance thereof. Neubauten's art is best experienced when you associate a visual counterpart with each noise, dispelling speculation like "what is that thing that sounds like a jackhammer pounding on concrete?" The answer is an actual jackhammer pounding on concrete, and the image is glorious. Set largely in a huge abandoned steel yard (aka the "Nakamatsu Ironworks-Ruins"), the performance shows off the found instruments that made the group famous. Einheit, as always, takes the starring role as the most creative player in this venture, pelting a heating duct with chunks of cement, then pounding it with wrenches, running across the room to attack pipes and bomb casings with fists full of hammers. Later, he appears out of nowhere as a chainsaw-wielding madman who haphazardly saws the same railroad tie he's standing on. Hacke answers by smashing, then collapsing upon, an amplified shopping cart. All of this happens during the course of "Sehnsucht". However, when Bargeld steps to the mic, he commands the stage, a strap-on harness providing a bit more umph to his stride, his gigantic, fluffy mullet highlighted against the fire that recently consumed the stage ("Zerstorte Zelle"). His vocal contributions function as any other instrument, howling and screeching amidst the controlled chaos of scraping feedback, occasional rogue jackhammers and Chung's bass guitar ostinato. Footage of the band during sound check and live in Japan ("Die Zeichnungen des Patienten" and "Der Tod ist ein Dandy", respectively) offers an even more energetic demonstration of their ability to push the intensity higher when someone is watching.

During the less "band" oriented pieces (the drone-like "Leitztes Biest" and sample-heavy choral song "Halber Mensch"), Ishii takes liberties by lauding more "film" aspects alongside the works, showing the birth of amoebas through a microscope, stills of each hand-made instrument (very cool), a fetus floating through space/the womb (not so cool), a shaken FM Einheit peering down as worms multiply, cover his foot and eventually consume his leg with acid, and a visage of a haunting I.C.P.-meets-Pagliacci Japanese clown. As upsetting as some of these sound, they're all tastefully constructed and mesh well with "the story". The album's "hit", "Z.N.S.", a song with near-pop elements (by Neubauten standards, of course) features a Japanese performance troupe, dressed in a mix of "Budo" garb and sci-fi prosthetics, interpreting the music. Footage of EN punching walls and each other's chests, banging their heads together, and using power drills on concrete, along with shots of Bargeld bobbing his head and snapping his fingers to the beat, are cross-cut during the scene; it makes Matthew Barney's Cremaster III: The Order, a film that mixes Masonic ritual, rock-climbing and punk performances in the Guggenheim, look stale and forced by comparison.

Super-fans (myself included) will appreciate Ishii's respect for the band -- he highlights their performance without zipping anything up in crappy video effects, and it's obvious that he "gets" them. Even if you're unfamiliar with Einstürzende Neubauten's work and historical significance, you'll appreciate Halber Mensch for its entertainment value -- who could resist the sight of a bunch of homeless-looking guys in the middle of a street, destroying their instruments while a madman screams into a megaphone (see "Schaben"). Ishii clearly and concisely captured the essence of the band and the culture surrounding them -- faults, defects, blemishes, dust, brilliance and all.

-- Dave Madden