Das Ich
Morgue
Danse Macabre Records / EFA

After the noisy and often almost danceable industrial assault on their last album, the new CD from German goth darlings Das Ich is a step back towards their more classically inspired first album. On this concept album Das Ich set poems by the expressionist writer Gottfried Benn to music. These lyrics are just as gruesome as you perhaps could imagine from the disk's title Morgue. Pretty hard stuff.

It's no wonder that Das Ich's current major record company considered this disk too demanding to be marketed as a proper album release. They refused to put it out at all. Therefore Das Ich had no other option but to reanimate their own old label, Danse Macabre Records, just for the release of this album.

The music is calmer than any of the later outings of Das Ich. Many tracks use orchestral sounds and classical instruments like string arrangements or piano, but all are processed electronically. But there are also many sampled noises and bubbling synthesizers. The music definitely has a charm of its own, it's not just background to the lyrics. Even though this is a lyrical concept album, the vocals were not mixed in the foreground, which means that any listener who doesn't understand German may still enjoy the songs.

So even though the commercial appeal of the album was not big enough for the record company, it should not be overlooked.

Copyright © 1999 Lonely Locke